


Are You There?

by LeafThoj



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive Laura Hale, Alpha Laura Hale, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Online Dating, College graduate Derek Hale, Laura ships Sterek, M/M, Online Friendship, Online Relationship, Online Romance, sterek
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-16
Updated: 2018-02-12
Packaged: 2018-08-22 17:36:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 26,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8294282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeafThoj/pseuds/LeafThoj
Summary: Stiles has an online friend. He talks to him about a lot of things that confuses him. Mostly his relationship problems. Sometimes just to de-stress. He hasn't met this friend just yet, and he sure didn't expect that the guy was also in Beacon Hills. Stiles spends years texting this friend "Wolf89" while going through some of the most messed up things imaginable because his best friend got bitten and turned into a werewolf.Derek Hale has a chip called guilt on his shoulder. It doesn't help that he finds out his online friend who was his only form of solace happens to be the awkward little dork named Stiles. Skinny. Defenseless. Awkward Stiles. Derek makes the decision to stick around Beacon Hills and Laura does the same now that she's got a newly bitten beta on her hands. The commotion of a new beta and the presence of hunters doesn't help Derek with his own predicament. Stiles hates Derek Hale but he values Wolf89.





	1. the Unique Conversationalist

Stiles stared at the time stamp on his Kik messenger. He groaned for the tenth time. He regretted messaging Wolf89 at 2 AM. It had been six hours since then and Stiles was already getting up for school. He sighed out and put down the phone, running off to get into the shower before his father woke up and grumbled empty threats at him.

Once he got to Scott’s house and honked the horn of his Jeep he heard the sharp _ding_ of his phone’s notification. Stiles squinted down at his Smartphone and stared at the notification on his locked screen. Taking a deep breath he unlocked his phone and opened the Kik app.

First he looked at his open message. He had sent a picture of a Tumblr post.

At first he’d thought it would be a funny way to start the conversation with the guy who had been commenting on his posts for the past months. After all comment streams and actually texting was two totally different things. When he didn’t get back a response a lot of thoughts came to him. Maybe Wolf89 didn’t like that sort of thing. Maybe it had been stupid to send the picture. Maybe Wolf89 hadn’t thought that much about actually talking to Stiles. Maybe he thought it was creepy that Stiles actually stalked his account and found his Kik messenger username.

Stiles braced himself and tried to scroll the screen down to find Wolf89’s response. Scott closed the passenger door as he slipped into the Jeep. He said something but Stiles didn’t hear him.

Confused Stiles tried to scroll down again. For a second he panicked and thought maybe he was letting himself see things out of a strange sense of hope. Then he saw the short, simple response he hadn’t expected.

Two. He wrote the number two. Stiles checked the image to see the answer. _2) You don’t have anything to say, you just want to talk to them._ Excitement threatened to overtake him. Stiles didn’t quite know how to respond to that. Okay, so Wolf89 didn’t talk much unless he wanted to. That meant Stiles would be talking to him. Okay.

He texted back right away. _“I thought I might’ve blown it as a conversation starter. Hahah.”_ Then after sending it decided to also send a winking smiling emoticon.

“Let’s go,” Stiles sighed out. He was relieved he hadn’t blown it making a new friend online. He pulled into the lane and headed to school.

In the middle of first period Stiles got a response.

_“It was unique.”_

Okay… so what was he supposed to say to that? Stiles waited but there wasn’t another response. Chewing the clip on his pen Stiles looked up and acted as if he was paying attention to his teacher. He switched his pen for his yellow highlighter, because organizing things and color coding helped his ADHD. Stiles marked his textbook so his teacher would ignore him. For a second the teacher seemed to eye him suspiciously but turned away from him.

Once the teacher turned his back, Stiles typed back a quick response. _“Unique as in ‘that was funny let’s see how funny’ or unique as in ‘alright this dude is weird let’s see how weird’???”_

Stiles regretted sending the question the moment the Kik app indicated the message went through. Of course he was going to be weird for even asking. What was wrong with him? He had to be smooth about this and impress the guy.

Well it wasn’t like he could call himself the “Unique Conversationalist” or something now, and be witty about his response. He had a second change to fix this disaster of a conversation and he went and blew that again.

Once he got out to lunch with Scott, he was staring at him phone contemplating looking at Wolf89’s response. It had been over an hour already. He just couldn’t help himself. He was actually afraid to know the answer. So instead he decided to let Scott talk to him about how the bite he’d gotten two nights ago was definitely doing something weird to him.

Stiles rolled his eyes at his childhood friend. “Dude, look, you don’t have a bite.” He shoved Scott’s collar and proved it to him. No bite on the neck. The skin was smooth and unbroken. Next he turned Scott’s wrist outward and showed him the clean unbroken skin there as well. No bites, not even bite marks. Nothing strange or out of the ordinary. Okay, so Scott’s pimples and zits magically disappeared but maybe _Proactiv_ was just really good at what it does. Yesterday’s goalie fiasco was a fluke too. Had to be.

“I still need to find my inhaler.”

“Okay, we’ll go find it after school,” Stiles promised. He sucked in a deep breath and braced himself to look at Wolf89’s response.

_“Just unique.”_

Stiles bit his lower lip. _“Okay, but what do you mean when you say unique?”_

This time the response came back in seconds. _“Unique, as in unlike the usual.”_ Stiles burst into a short laugh and Scott asked him what was so funny. He shook his head at his best friend and told him it was nothing.

_“Fine. I’m glad you replied.”_

_“So, just how old are you?”_

This time Stiles paused in response. He was sixteen years old. Old enough to be on social media sites, blogging things and posting things on sites for strangers who wanted to stay anonymous. Not old enough to be talking to an unknown dude who could be a creepy 38-year-old guy with no life living in his mother’s basement. Stiles felt the image he had of his snarky, cool Wolf89 online buddy begin to crack.

Stiles responded without giving a direct age. _“How old am I? Old enough to party!”_ Then groaned and asked himself if he really just gave that damn line. These text messages were not his best moments—and Stiles had a lot of not very good moments already.

_“So how’s lunch?”_

Okay was this guy psychic or something? Sure most people ate lunch at this hour but he was clearly asking as if he knew for certain Stiles was having lunch. He looked around and tried to see if anyone was staring directly at him. No one was looking at him so it couldn’t be that someone was messing with him. It definitely wasn’t Scott, because Scott didn’t have the finesse to be snarky or sarcastic. He definitely didn’t have the know-how to even use Kik. When Stiles looked down at his app again he saw another message from Wolf89. _“Only a punk would say that. Let’s just hope for both our sakes you’re in high school at least.”_

What the hell was this? So now he was being patronized for being a sixteen-year-old teenager looking to expand his horizons? Seriously. Stiles decided to respond back out of spite.

_“Afraid you’re going to get arrested?”_

_“Depends.”_

_“On what?”_

_“If you’re the sheriff’s son.”_

This was getting eerily creepy. Stiles decided not to confirm the fact that he was actually the sheriff’s son.

The next response from Wolf89 was likely a teasing banter. _“I’m liable to get detained without due process.”_ It didn’t make the knot in Stiles’ stomach untie however.

 _“My dad’s old fashion. He’ll probably shoot you with a shotgun.”_ Actually his dad would take out his own personal glock. Then afterward Stiles would probably be grounded for life for talking to some strange man online—even though the conversation was innocuous.

Wolf89 didn’t need to know any of that.

_“He’ll need more firepower than that.”_

Overconfidence much?

Stiles decided not to send a reply. He went the rest of the school day, and at Scott’s annoying request they drove out into the woods of Beacon Hills. They tried to backtrack their trail from two nights ago. Scott was going on about something and Stiles played most of his friend’s worries off. He was in the middle of joking with his friend about being a werewolf when someone walked out in front of them from nowhere.

“Hey! What are you doing here?” a violent voice shouted at them. Stiles jumped in place and grabbed Scott’s arm to pull his best friend back when he finally focused on the man. “This is private property.” The dark haired man glowered at them.

“Uh, sorry man, we didn’t know.” Stiles gulped and tried to remember if anyone actually lived out there in the woods. He recalled that one of the oldest and most prominent families in Beacon Hills used to own a house out in the woods. The Hale family used to live here.

“Yeah, we were just looking for some-” Scott was in the middle of his sentence when he stopped talking. He backed away. “Uh, forget it. Come on man, let’s go.” He turned around and made Stiles turn around with him. “I gotta go to work.” Stiles glanced back one more time at the angrily brooding man before following after.

“Do you know who that was?” Stiles excited whispered to his friend. They walked shoulder to shoulder as they backtracked to his Jeep.

“No?” Scott graced him with his usual confused expression which looked a lot more as if he was constipated. One of these days things were just going to click a lot faster than it normally did for Scott. Not to say his friend was stupid, but sometimes it was as if the guy just didn’t make an effort to connect with all the things he had memorized in his head.

“That was Derek Hale.”

“Who?”

“You know he’s only like a few years older than us,” Stiles reminded Scott. He understood Scott wasn’t really into all the crimes and violent news as much as he was, so he definitely wouldn’t remember this case. “You remember right?” It had been pretty big news at the time.

“Remember what?”

“His family,” he prompted his friend. Still nothing. “They all burned to death in a fire like six years ago.” He remembered that incident. It was unsolved. The family had been trapped inside. No one knew how or why really, but the investigation went on for months.

“I wonder what he’s doing back here.”

Stiles shrugged. It was regrettable they never found that dead body in the woods the other night. Scott’s inhaler was lost somewhere in the woods. His friend thought he’d been bitten by a wolf when there hasn’t been wolves in these woods for years. It might’ve just been the full moon in general.

* * *

 

Derek sat on the old dusty cloth thrown over the singed couch in his burnt old mansion home. He stared at his phone.

“Waiting on your texting boyfriend to reply?” a feminine chuckle made Derek stare up and turn toward the foot of the stairs. Walking into the living room his older sister smiled at him. Then she leaned against the wall with her arms folded to her chest.

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Derek sighed. Laura did that thing she always did when she thought she knew Derek was lying but was willing to indulge him. She hummed a short melodic note before walking over. She sat down at the edge of the couch and put his feet over her lap.

Her hand fell on his knee. “I’m sorry it happened,” she said softly.

“He tried to kill you,” Derek growled. After six years he found he was jaded from life. He didn’t want to believe in anything anymore. Even now it was hard for him to completely believe in and trust his older sister—his Alpha. “Peter deserved what happened.”

Laura shook her head. She had that gentle quiet look in her eyes the same way their mother had. She wasn’t much older than he was but he had always felt as if she was decades older. Laura had always tried following their mother’s footsteps.

“That boy didn’t deserve what happened either,” Laura quietly pointed out. Her hand softly kneaded his knee as if trying to sooth him by petting him. Derek sighed out. Peter had thought he killed Laura the other night and tried to turn that shaggy haired kid earlier. Instead the kid started bleeding out. Fortunately Derek came in time. He managed to hold his ground with Peter before noticing the immediate threat of the boy’s life. He tried taking the boy’s pain to stall the boy’s death.

The shock that his bite hadn’t worked forced Peter into a state of confusion. It allowed Laura to come at him from behind and put him down. Someone had been in the woods earlier when Laura had been attacked and called it in. Before long they heard the sirens but the boy had already been fading. Laura had felt it was her responsibility to save the boy and so she gave him the Bite. It was a slim chance he would make it, but soon enough he started healing.

Derek carried him far away from the scene and left him somewhere closer to the road so the cops might find him. Now his sister had another beta in her pack but she hadn’t planned on turning anyone. Their family had always been careful about biting someone into their community. The bite was a gift. Someone had to choose it and his mother usually could tell when someone was worthy of being bitten.

“I’m glad that boy’s fine.” Laura had that soft distant smile on her. Derek could hear how her heart quivered. It sounded like she was afraid. To be afraid of that little shaggy kid was pathetic even for his sister. She was overly sensitive and gentle ever since the fire six years ago.

Derek felt his phone vibrate and unlocked his Smartphone to look at the message from _TheOnlyBatman_. Laura thought it was funny to give him the username Wolf89, which was basically him as a werewolf and the year of his birth. At least it wasn’t as ridiculous as calling himself Batman.

As he read the message, _“OMG just met the worse possible case of constipated anger management ever,”_ his sister dropped a very mom question on him.

“So how’s college going?”

Derek exhaled sharply and stared up at the dusty old ceiling. “I graduated already.” He finished high school out of state, and as Laura had wanted he went to college out of state as well. This was the first time he was back in California, the first time he’d been back in Beacon Hills in five years.

“I thought you were having problems with your credits?” Laura asked him in confusion. Derek glared over at his sister.

He sat up and swung his legs down on the floor. “I handled it.” Derek stood up and walked a few steps away from his sister. “Did you find her?” Derek finally asked.

“No,” Laura answered quietly, shame coating her voice. He heard the unsaid words, _but I will_.

Was their younger sister even alive? Cora was the only one unaccounted for in the fire from six years ago. Everyone else burned. Derek had been out that night trying to race home with the knowledge that it was his fault his family was burning. That was the night Derek stopped trusting, and the other night solidified that belief.

Cora had been out with Laura that night, but she’d been lost in the rush and panic. By the time the firefighters made their way to the house the flames were already burning too high and too hot. He’d heard the screams, knelt in the dirt crying. Everything he’d tried hadn’t been able to stop it. When the fire was finally put out the result was this soot covered house perpetually smelling of smoke. Peter had been the only one who was still alive but he’d been half burnt and in a coma. No one had time to immediately count the bodies or to see to his little sister. Not even him.

Once Laura was finally able to find him Cora had disappeared. After handling everything Laura had suggested he move out of Beacon Hills. He fought it up until his senior year when Laura announced she would be leaving to try and track Cora down. So he decided to leave too and finished high school out of state. Five years later they still haven’t found their little sister.

The question hung in his heart with the heaviness of that fire. Was Cora even alive?

He walked out of the house and headed toward the spot he left that kid’s body the other night. He checked around the spot, brushing leaves and twigs out of the way. Derek found the white inhaler lying in the ground partly covered in dirt. He picked it up and stared at the prescription label on the inhaler.

Scott McCall.

Derek took in a deep breath. His sister’s new beta was a fucking asthmatic. Well, at least the dork was going to get the transformative benefits to being a werewolf.

He stuck the inhaler into his jacket pocket and took out his phone. He stared at the response from “Batman” again.

_“OMG just met the worse possible case of constipated anger management ever!”_

Derek sent back a question mark to prompt the teenager on the other line for details. He still couldn’t believe the snarky little shit who’d been making him laugh to himself for the past months was underage. If Derek hadn’t found the kid’s posts online he probably would have given up graduating college on time and gone for another semester to make up those three credits he would have failed. If he hadn’t realized earlier that the kid was actually a kid he might have said gone into conversations that could count as sexual harassment of a minor.

_“Crazy dude in the woods.”_

Crazy dude in the woods? For some reason if Derek looked at it from another perspective he could just imagine who was that crazy dude in the woods—he didn’t like what was coming up. Derek turned back around and headed back for the house.

_“Apparently we were on his property.”_

Shit.

Derek clutched his hand around the inhaler in his jacket pocket. Derek didn’t want to know who Batman was, but he knew it fucking wasn’t Bruce Wayne from Gotham City. What were the chances his Batman was from Beacon Hills and one of those snot nosed high school kids?

Well if that wasn't  _unique._


	2. His Batman and Robin

Derek sighed as he stared at the notification on his phone. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to continue reading the complaints from _“TheOnlyBatman”_.

Instead Derek wandered off in thought of his own problems. Laura left a couple days ago when they realized Peter hadn’t died in the woods the other night. After they were brought in for questioning by the police about the reported “dead body” it was then that they realized the body was never recovered. Laura had thought it would have been less of a hassle leaving Peter’s body in the woods to be found by the authorities. Both of them should have beheaded Peter to be certain he’d died.

After leaving the police station, he and Laura had gone out and tried to follow the trail of Peter’s scent. His scent was difficult to follow. Even at the exact spot they knew where Peter had laid apparently dead and bleeding they found track him. His blood they could track but at some point Peter had healed or been picked up by someone. His scent changed or was covered up and was gone.

Laura decided as the Alpha to go after him on her own.

Derek had been stuck with the job of handling Laura’s new beta. Scott McCall had gotten into first line for Lacrosse, which he had vehemently suggested wasn’t the best idea. Scott had no idea what it was like to become a werewolf. Derek didn’t quite either. He’d never had to handle a turned werewolf before. He’d met plenty but most of them were already used to being one by the time he’d met them. Of course being a teenager and whether you were born or turned a werewolf couldn’t be that different.

Despite all the annoying little things he had to not just teach Scott McCall about being a werewolf, he had to be the one to protect Scott. Then part of the body of a girl showed up in the woods. Derek did his best to work prevention with Scott McCall, but when the body showed up he knew Laura hadn’t found Peter. Peter was after being an Alpha, and Laura was out there on her own tracking him. Derek found the top half of the unknown girl at the edge of his family’s property and almost couldn’t hold back the disgust.

His uncle hadn’t killed just any girl, it had been a werewolf. Derek didn’t know who she was but he buried her. He had put a wolfsbane flower on top of the girl’s grave, but two days later after he’d threatened Scott McCall not to play his first game he was arrested for the girl’s murder. Burying her where he found her was a bit of a dumb idea, but he couldn’t have just buried the unfortunate werewolf girl anywhere. Especially if the person who did rip her in half was Peter.

He was released as there wasn’t actual proof he did anything. Derek merely sat and waited for the charges to be dropped because the police couldn’t hold him without proof. Fortunately he was released a lot earlier because the Medical Examiner determined the killer of that girl had been an animal and not a person. That she was buried in his property still left the police with a lot of questions for him, but all Derek had to do was shrug and deny that he hadn’t even known the girl was buried there.

Days after the game Derek was lying on the couch wishing against all possibility his sister would come back and take him off the responsibility of caring for her beta. Derek got a headache each time he had to think about trying to keep Scott from killing himself or the people around him. Not only was Derek in charge of teaching Scott about werewolves and protect him from Peter, but he had to protect everyone else from Scott as well.

His phone vibrated again. He looked at the second notification of the texting app on his phone. Derek sighed and unlocked his phone, then clicked on the app and looked at the message from Batman. Derek felt really awkward knowing he was actually enjoying a conversation with a high school kid. The chances of Batman not being a teenager was really thin.

 _“He didn’t answer my question.”_ Derek raised an eyebrow in confusion at the first text. Then stared at the second text that made him unlock his phone. _“I asked him if I was attractive to gay guys.”_ Derek really hoped it wasn’t Scott McCall telling him this, and at the same time Derek was really hoping it wasn’t Scott’s skinny human friend either. He could keep hoping but Derek already knew which of the two of them _Batman_ was considering their earlier conversations.

Derek typed back, _“Who?”_

_“My friend Robin.”_

_“Robin?”_ Derek shook his head. _Batman and Robin_.

_“Cuz I’m Batman.”_

_“And ‘Robin’ is gay?”_ Derek was certain Scott McCall was not gay.

_“No, he’s not.”_

Derek was going to text back but another text came in. _“At least I don’t think he’s into guys.”_ Derek asked himself why Stiles would ask Scott McCall such a question. Why would Scott even know the answer to that question? It wasn’t like being a werewolf included a gay radar in the packaging.

Stiles texted again. _“Also he’s thinking of going to ask for help from AMC.”_

Derek stared at the screen for a long time. The theater?

His phone vibrated with Stiles’ response. _“Anger Management Case.”_

Derek recalled Stiles calling him the “worse possible case of constipated anger management”. He sighed as he leaned his head all the way down the armrest of the couch until his neck was being cradled by the armrest. He stared upside-down at his burnt home that was falling apart. Derek debated again whether he could continue this online buddy farce with Stiles Stilinski—son of the sheriff. Derek knew the moment Stiles stepped into the police car last weekend to confront him that it was Stiles who was _TheOnlyBatman._

The problem was that Stiles had no idea Derek was on the other line. Well, it wouldn’t hurt to get information from him like this. It wasn’t exactly necessary. Derek had been on his own for a while.

_“Help?”_

Derek waited and then he got bored. He got up and walked to the decrepit kitchen. Here, part of the ceiling was broken and the room was drafty. In the time he’d been away Derek had thought about getting the house fixed or remade but it was difficult to think about.

He sat down on one of the dusty old stools that had somehow survived the fire. Derek heard it creak under him and braced himself for when it might break. When nothing happened Derek pulled the brown bag of burger and fries from the counter to him. Derek unwrapped the oily burger and started eating. When his phone vibrated Derek ignored the notification because he was definitely not going to stop eating for a punk kid who didn’t even know how to wear blazers.

* * *

 

Stiles didn’t get it. Just as class started he couldn’t stop himself. He tapped Scott’s shoulder.

“If Derek’s not the Alpha then who is?” Scott shook his head and grumbled that he didn’t know. “Did the Alpha kill the bus driver? Does Allison’s day know about-” Scott turned and growled the same answer again. They both stopped and calmed down as their history teacher gave them back their graded test. It was easy to see that Scott was going through a high level stress and that his low grade was just adding to it.

He offered to help Scott to study to make up for the D-minus. Scott declined because he was “just studying” with Allison after school. Stiles pressured his friend about not just studying with the great opportunity he’d just been given.

“Okay I get it,” Scott grumbled in annoyance. “Just…” Scott took a breath to calm down, “Just stop with the questions.”

Knowing his friend was done and the lesson would begin soon Stiles agreed. “Done. No more questions. No more talk about the Alpha or…” he found himself pausing as he thought on his worries, “Derek.” They knew almost nothing about what was with the Hale family, or the werewolves, or why Derek was even helping them. As they know of right now the bus driver was hopefully the second victim of the crazy werewolf who bit Scott. Stiles figured that had to be the Alpha, because Scott had said that Derek called the two of them betas. The rest of what Derek told Scott made no sense really. The monster was running around, someone was handling it, Scott had to keep away and control himself.

“Especially Derek—who still scares me.” The man was dangerous and he made Stile’s stomach twist inside out and outside in again. Stiles didn’t like admitting even to himself the bundle of panic and anxiety and excitement that ran through him when it came to Derek. Derek was a mystery wrapped in danger covered in vengeful anger while encased in werewolf arrogance. And Stiles did not want to play with fire, because Derek was a fire that would rage through a forest.

Stiles texted Wolf89 but had no response. His online buddy had been short on responses the last couple weeks. It worried him a little. Maybe the guy got tired of talking to someone online? He could have been trying to be polite by replying to Stiles but he wasn’t as invested in keeping the conversation going. Or maybe the idea that Stiles was a high school student freaked him out. Stiles waited and checked his texts the entire school day but Wolf89 never responded back.

_“You’re the older mature adult here, and I need old people wisdom!”_

Stiles groaned at lunch as he read through the other texts he had sent since the morning.

_“I really need some help here. Really confused. Text back.”_

_“Hey, are you like scared of minors or something?”_

_“Come on dude, really would like your response.”_

_“Ugh, old people are so moody. Look, just text back.”_

Stiles didn’t want to look at the other ones because he knew what he had written. His face was going unnecessarily red from embarrassment. God he can’t believe he sounded so desperate and needy. It was like watching a train wreck. It happened and know you couldn’t fix it and there was all this aftermath and…

Stiles took a deep breath. He looked at the last few messages.

_“Okay, you’re probably busy I get that. Just text me when you can.”_

Which he could have left at without ruining it too badly. But then…

_“Alright! I get it, creepy high schooler here.”_

Oh God, now it was like watching someone get run over and then the car coming back for round two.

And finally Stiles’ last text. _“Are you there?”_

Stiles pounded his head on the cafeteria table. That had to be the last message. Stiles fought through the rest of the school day forcing himself not to text Wolf89 one more time. He had to wait for an answer—if he ever got one.

School finally ended and Stiles pulled out of his parking spot. He was just driving through the lot when Derek freaking Hale appeared out of nowhere holding his hand out. As quickly as he could Stiles pressed down on the brakes.

“Oh my god!” he rasped. Stiles just barely managed to stop his car before he hit Derek, but then the werewolf collapsed as if Stiles had hit him.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me, this guy’s everywhere!” He looked around quickly to find some kind of reason for why Derek was around stalking them.

Stiles heard the cars beeping behind him. All the students were in a rush to leave school but it had only been like thirty seconds since he abruptly braked. Stiles stepped out of the car to check up on Derek Hale. Scott joined him as he was getting out of the car.

The initial glance didn’t look so bad. He was wearing his favorite leather jacket and black jeans. He did look very pale and his breathing was labored. His eyes kept flashing between that werewolf-y blue glow on and off.

With a closer look, they realized just why his eyes kept flashing and why he was pale. Derek had been shot and the wound wasn’t healing. Scott suddenly miraculously made the connection from what happened yesterday night about being called out by the alpha. Derek’s eyes flashed this bright blue eye and couldn’t control it. Apparently the bullet shot by the Argents was laced with some kind of poison that effected werewolves. Out of urgency Scott had Stiles take Derek into his car and drive him off. As if Stiles didn’t have other things to do—like freak out over Wolf89 and not Derek.

He wanted to argue but with all the cars honking and the bleeding Stiles couldn’t really stand there to dispute his case. “I hate you for this,” Stiles grumbled instead. He drove off with Derek. Down the road at some point Derek struggled to finally shrug off his leather jacket.

When he told Derek he was sending him back to his house the asshole demanded he turn the car around. Derek told him he couldn’t go to his own house since he couldn’t protect himself. Stiles pulled over in frustration. Scott needed more time to find the bullet. He couldn’t drop off the one guy he didn’t trust or want to be around. Why was things with Derek freaking Hale never easy?

“Are you dying?” he shouted at Derek.

“No yet,” he rasped. He slowly folded his sleeve up and showed Stiles the bullet wound.

Nausea struck him right away. “Oh my God, what is that?” Stiles pulled away. He saw the black veins running up his arm from where the bullet struck him. It didn’t look healthy. Derek’s arm looked like it was rotting—as if his body was dying. “Is that contagious? You know you should just get out.” Stiles did not want to spend any more time with this guy. If Derek died he probably deserved it.

“Start the car,” Derek said in labored breaths. “Now.”

Stiles tried to hold his own ground. “I don’t think you get to bark orders with the way you look, okay?” He didn’t have time for this. He didn’t want to have time for this. Why did Stiles get to be the one taking care of Derek Hale who threatened to more than once violently hurt Scott and him? Why were they even helping Derek? “In fact,” Stiles brought up, “I think if I wanted to, I could probably drag your little werewolf ass out into the middle of the road and leave you for dead!” Stiles knew he probably wouldn’t do it.

“Start the car,” Derek demanded again in labored breaths. He repeated himself so calmly it was like Stiles’ threat hadn’t meant anything at all. “Or I’m gonna rip your throat out,” Derek added. Stiles rolled his eyes. “With my teeth.” Seriously! Stiles started the car and drove—where, he had no freaking idea. He had better be reimbursed for his gas.

When he called Scott again to ask if he found the magic bullet or whatever that hurt werewolves, Scott once again said he needed more time. Stiles fumed. Derek was starting to smell like death and he had a feeling that was because Derek was actually rotting away. Scott’s bright idea was to take Derek and wait at the animal clinic where Scott worked. Honestly Stiles did not want to watch Derek rot to death much less smell it or be there to witness severe vomiting and seizures—or whatever side effects came with that magic bullet.

“You’re not going to believe where he’s telling me to take you.”

He handed the phone to Derek because Stiles was done with the situation. Derek did that hard-ass act where he told Scott exactly what he had to do. As if Scott was some good little soldier. Stiles rolled his eyes and started the car again. They were quiet the entire time.

Once they got to the animal clinic and he got them to the back, Derek lumbered in and fell on top of stacked bags of dog food. He checked his phone to see if Wolf89 had texted him but it was a message from Scott. Despite not wanting to have any more further interaction with Derek he braced himself for asking the question.

“Does Northern Blue Monkshood mean anything to you?”

“It’s a rare form of wolfsbane,” Derek rasped. After their exchange Stiles texted Scott to hurry up because they needed the bullet. They sat there longer so Derek could catch his breath.

Observing Derek he could see some other symptoms besides the paleness, blood loss, and black veins. He was shivering as if he couldn’t help it, but sweating as though he’d just done a 10k run in summer in the Hawaii at noon. His eyes were starting to show dark circles too. Stiles swallowed hard and tried to find think of the positive possible one percent chance Derek just needed to walk or sleep it off.

Then Derek got up and they headed into the surgery end of the animal clinic. Derek started looking through the clinic but Stiles tried to make the tense atmosphere less serious. Stiles was just sort of there and it mostly looked like Derek had everything under control.

“Really doesn’t look like anything some Echinacea and a good night of sleep couldn’t take care of,” came out of his mouth before Stiles thought better of it. It was the desperate one percent positivity he was trying to work on. Mostly for himself and not Derek Hale.

Derek decided to inform him in rasps, “When the infection reaches my heart… it’ll kill me.” Stiles took in a deep breath and realized positivity just wasn’t brooding Derek’s thing. “If he doesn’t get here with the bullet…” Derek pulled out an electric bone saw. At least he thought it was a bone saw. “Last resort.”

Oh God. When he talked about having a last resort he meant his arm. Stiles felt his stomach squeeze itself. He was already flashing back to all the horror movies and scenes he’d seen in his sixteen years of life. He definitely didn’t want to experience that in his life.

“Look I don’t know if I can do this,” Stiles frowned once Derek started getting ready to get his arm chopped off. Okay how the hell was it that Derek could even fathom the very idea of chopping his arm off like it was nothing?

“Why not?”

Well for one Stiles wasn’t into pain. And two he really wasn’t into gore. “Well, because of the cutting through the flesh,” he started to mention, “the sawing of the bone, and especially the blood!” What if he bled to death if this didn’t work? Stiles would have abetted in ritual suicide or something like that. Murder if anything, because it wasn’t as if Derek meant to kill himself. It would be considered a bad judgement call that would mean Stiles—the sane one—helped him with his insane idea.

Derek seemed to have rolled his eyes up at Stiles but it was hard to tell with the paleness and groaning and languidness. “You faint at the sight of blood?” he grunted out with a twinge of annoyance in his tone.

“No,” Stiles shook his head and couldn’t help lashing out with the obvious, “But I might at the sight of a CHOPPED-OFF ARM!”

Derek groaned and started into his threat. “Either you cut off my arm, or I’m gonna cut off your head.” Again with the threats and killing him. Stiles wasn’t going to believe him but then Derek vomited.

“What the hell is that?” he squirmed at the black ooze.

“My body trying to heal itself…”

Stiles still tried to stay his ground. He did not want to, but between the insistence of a poisoned werewolf who kept threatening Stiles and the black ooze he just barfed up Stiles braced himself to chop off his arm. God he tried—he honestly tried but this was going to give him more than nightmares.

Then just as he was going to Scott finally arrived and a breath of relief escaped. A little set back after that—Derek fainting from blood loss and all. Stiles punching him in the face—he hadn’t wanted to one but it had felt nice to do at the same time. Then Derek burned the contents in the bullet and stuffed it into his bullet wound. It was kind of creepy, and he fell over and struggled on the floor. Derek was shirtless and groaning loudly in pain, and then he healed and it was the coolest fucking thing Stiles had seen so far. He was awed.

Afterward Stiles didn’t care what happened he went home. He was so done with this insanity. After witnessing what Derek had done and all those other things Stiles didn’t have any more energy to spend on the werewolves. Derek also did not want Stiles to go with him to show Scott proof of why he shouldn’t rely on the Argents.

Stiles got home and laid on his bed in exhaustion. He didn’t want to know what Derek and Scott did until after tomorrow. Instead what he did was stare at his phone in anticipation. Wolf89 still hadn’t texted him back. He didn’t want to send him another text. Maybe Wolf89 deleted the app, or maybe-

_Ding._

Stiles fumbled his phone and sat up. _“Hey_ ,” came the simple reply. Hey? That was all Stiles got? After all the crazy messages he sent, Wolf89 sent him a “hey”? What the hell.

 _“Hey,”_ he replied.

_“So what did you want to talk about?”_

Stiles rolled his eyes. Where did he start and exactly what could he say about the situation? Stiles decided he couldn’t tell Wolf89 the entire truth, but he could at least tell him a lot of his frustrations and maybe give it a different kind of flare. Like instead of Derek Hale being shot with a magic bullet, let’s just say he was poisoned. Instead of werewolf-y things, we could just say Derek and Scott both had angry bursts and things like mad-dog eyes. Or not mention that at all.

_“It has been a long day.”_

A minute later Wolf89 responded. _“I’ve got a long night.”_ Stiles smiled. He could see the pattern. Wolf89 rarely ever talked about his personal life the way Stiles did. He was cautious about what he could or should say, as if he had something to hide.

 _“Let’s start with this morning…”_ And so Stiles stayed up an extra hour and a half to text really long messages to Wolf89 on his phone.


	3. His Past with the Present

It wasn’t very long since the wolfsbane bullet incident when Derek found his home attacked by hunters. He’d been ready for them, being able to sense them before they could even see the house. He’d gone up the second floor and chose to wait them out as Laura would have suggested in the situation. Until they baited him into attacking, and not very long after that battle he was running from his own home.

Derek ran a few more miles into the woods until he knew the hunters couldn’t track him anymore. He waited until it was a little darker, certain they were gone and circled around back to the manor.

As he made his way back to the manor he thought on what Kate said. Derek ran his hand against his side were Kate had tased him with her 900,000 volts electric stick. Since no one knew who the girl Peter killed was, she was classified as a Jane Doe. The way Kate had antagonized him, it was clear the hunters assumed the dark haired girl was his sister. She could have been an omega, or another pack’s beta who had wandered here. Unfortunately she did have some similar features to Laura which could be why the hunters thought she was his sister.

Kate referred to Peter as “the Alpha”. That meant they were aware of a new beta but they didn’t know that Laura was still alive or that she had inherited their mother’s Alpha powers. He would have to update Laura, and let her know to be careful not to be seen. He had luckily already convinced Scott that the Argents were bad news. Although Peter was no longer in the hospital, he was still able to bring Scott to the hospital and ask for pictures of Peter when he first came in. He’d been wrapped up and half burnt, having slipped into coma not long after that.

Laura had disagreed with Derek on keeping it a secret just who had actually turned him. Derek never lied, but he had let Scott think what he wanted. For whatever reason, Peter did seem fixated on getting Scott to join him and his killing spree. It could be that Peter, in his madness, thought he had killed Laura and that he was an Alpha and had turned Scott.

Once he got back to the manor it was fairly obvious by the fading stench that the hunters had gone through the house. While Derek spent an extensive amount of his time here, he didn’t actually live here. Most of his things were kept at the hotel except his car and his phone. Derek had already checked on his car. It looked like they didn’t bother with it, but he should probably bring it into the shop to get it double checked.

Derek walked into the living room—or the foyer as his parents used to like calling it. He knelt down by a corner and opened one of the floorboards there. He pulled out his phone and turned it on. He walked back to the couch and sat down.

A massive amount of text messages from Batman spammed his phone. He read through them. Stiles was mostly annoyed with Derek—or _AMC_. The feeling was mutual. Apparently Stiles was also mad at _Robin_ —Scott, who hadn’t answered any of his text messages or calls.

_“I’m going to kill him!!!”_

Derek could only imagine Stiles with a wooden bat unsuccessfully used as a weapon against Scott. He then scrolled down and read the next messages.

_“Like seriously. The asshole of the school and the love of my life get attacked by a MONSTER and this guy’s off God knows where. I’m going to kill him!”_

Derek raised an eyebrow curiously. Love of his life?

_“Official police report says mountain lion, but still!”_

Derek had been with Scott last night above the video rental store. Peter’s list of victims seemed at random. Laura had said there was a definite pattern to the killings in her last messages. Although he’d only killed the other werewolf and the bus driver before, but Laura was certain that while the werewolf hadn’t been part of the pattern that any killing by Peter had to have a pattern. There was motive behind them.

_“I am going to TEAR HIM APART.”_

So the redheaded girl with the pouty lips was the love of Stiles’ life? She was definitely better than average, but not exactly Derek’s type. At least he assumed Stiles was talking about the girl and not Jackson. If Jackson was Stiles’ type he sorely needed to rethink calling Derek “Anger Management Case”.

 _“Shit. Shit. Shit,”_ was the next message from Stiles, the timestamp told him it was a couple hours after his last one. _“A mountain lion showed up at the school.”_ Derek sat up from slumping into the couch. He glared at his phone. Mountain lion was obviously some stupid assumption the police and others had made about yesterday’s attack. That an actual mountain lion showed up was too much of a coincidence. _“My dad got hit by a car. Robin’s girlfriend’s scary gun-selling dad shot the poor creature. And I’m pretty sure all of this would have been solved if he hadn’t…”_ Stiles wrote a really long ranting message on all his frustrations with Scott. Then Stiles proceeded to eloquently explain all the ways he was going to physically torture Scott.

The torture would have seemed more impressive if Derek hadn’t known Stiles couldn’t even stand the idea of sawing off Derek’s arm.

Derek put down his phone and went up the stairs. He found his shirt where he left it on his old bed in his old bedroom. He tried not to actually see the room, quickly turning away as he slipped on his shirt. Any of the other rooms he could stand to look, but it was his own that made his stomach clench in distaste. He didn’t want to remember himself from six years ago. That Derek burned with his family and this manor.

Derek went back down the stairs and picked up his phone.

Just as he was going to reply to Batman, another message came through. _“I’m so not talking to him anymore!”_ Derek knew that was a childish declaration.

 _“Mountain lion case solved I presume,”_ Derek wrote back. Just then he felt another presence outside his family’s territory. Scott McCall made his way to Derek’s front door.

When he opened the door Scott asked him for help. He wanted to know how to fight, mostly how to defend—not against just the Alpha but also the Argents. It was clear that while Stiles had been anxious over the ordeals, Scott had found some flimsy resolve for survival. Not that Derek honesty cared about their friendship or their views on him. Derek made a promise to keep Scott out of trouble and from causing trouble. That included telling him he couldn’t have relationships—especially not at his age when he couldn’t control his impulses.

The next couple of days, Derek was hard on Scott on purpose. He surprised Scott when he could, following him and trapping him, and overall he did his best to teach Scott the advantage of being alert.

Meanwhile Stiles went through rants on their messaging app.

_TheOnlyBatman: “Why do I even bother?”_

_Wolf89: “With?”_

_TheOnlyBatman: “Robin!”_

_Wolf89: “What about your best friend?”_

_TheOnlyBatman: “How’d you know he was my best friend?”_

_Wolf89: “Would you complain about anyone else?”_

_TheOnlyBatman: “Hey!”_

_TheOnlyBatman: “I take offense to that.”_

_TheOnlyBatman: “I can complain about anyone!”_

_Wolf89: “Right.”_

_TheOnlyBatman: “He just happens to be the one I’m complaining about right now.”_

_Wolf89: “Right.”_

_TheOnlyBatman: “I complain about plenty of other people.”_

_TheOnlyBatman: “Like AMC.”_

_Wolf89: “Yeah, you really hate that guy.”_

_TheOnlyBatman: “He’s a sketchy character.”_

_Wolf89: “Sketchy?”_

_TheOnlyBatman: “Dude appears out of nowhere. Watches us from across the field when we’re practicing lacrosse. And he threatened to kill us.”_

_TheOnlyBatman: “Well… me.”_

_Wolf89: “So he’s sketchy?”_

_TheOnlyBatman: “It’s creepy. Like serial killer creepy!”_

Derek remembered being taken aback at being called creepy. Of course this was Stiles, who had too much energy and apparently ADHD.

_TheOnlyBatman: “Okay, let’s talk about something else! I don’t want to think about him.”_

_Wolf89: “Sure.”_

Stiles sent him another picture with text on it. Derek almost laughed, but instead he allowed a small smile as he read the words.

Derek wasn’t sure how he was supposed to respond to the image. Most of the time when Stiles sent him one of these picture text things he knew how to reply, but this one was clearly meant to be something else. Was Stiles gay? Derek quickly threw out the idea since Stiles had mentioned the redheaded girl being the love of his life. Maybe he was just trying to be funny. Stiles was awkward and clumsy in a strange relaxing way when he was texting. Derek couldn’t say the same about in real life.

_TheOnlyBatman: “I don’t see why no one’s willing to date me!”_

Derek rolled his eyes. Why was the kid so fixated on being attractive to others? Okay, that was a stupid thought. Stiles was sixteen years old. What else did he think about?

_Wolf89: “Cherry boy.”_

_TheOnlyBatman: “Shut up.”_

_TheOnlyBatman: “Unless you know someone willing to help me out here.”_

_Wolf89: “You’re pretty much jailbait. Too dangerous.”_

_TheOnlyBatman: “OMG. Just how old are you? 40?!”_

At that point Derek almost broke his phone. He turned off the hotel’s television which was mostly just white noise for him when he heard the elevator door open. Derek lifted his nose up and took in a deep breath. Laura was back from God knows where.

_Wolf89: “No.”_

He looked up after texting Batman just as the electronic lock beeped and the door opened. An exhausted Laura stumbled in and dropped her duffle bag on the floor. She clicked the door closed which automatically locked.

“Derek,” she sighed out and headed straight for him. She hugged him tight and took in his scent as she buried her nose into his collarbone. “I got your messages,” came her muffled explanation for holding him so long and so tightly. “Now explain in detail.”

Derek wrinkled his nose at his older sister. “Maybe after you shower.”

“Oh, right.” Apparently Laura had gotten used to her own stank. It was mostly just old sweat layered over dirt, layered over sweat, layered over dirt again and again. She started stripping right in front of him as she headed for the bathroom door. Derek sighed again as he knew it would be his job to clean up after her.

Laura was usually very meticulous about her things, but not when she spent most of her time with her more beastly side. Then she came back and had zero social graces or really any manners.

Derek laid back down on his bed and looked at his messages with Stiles again.

_TheOnlyBatman: “So somewhere between 20-39.”_

_TheOnlyBatman: “Old wise one, please give me some of your dating tips.”_

_Wolf89: “No tips.”_

_TheOnlyBatman: “Stingy.”_

For some reason Derek decided to be honest. He wrote back his reply very clearly, _“I saw my ex recently. It wasn’t pleasant.”_

_TheOnlyBatman: “What happened?”_

_Wolf89: “In simple terms, she brought some guys with her and tried to beat me up.”_ Derek wasn’t going to admit that while he handled the men rather easily, Kate and her weapons made quick work of him.

And this was how Derek ended up telling Stiles what he could about Kate Argent, without letting Stiles know who she was and who he was. Derek quickly stopped when he heard the shower turned off, even though Stiles was spamming him with a million questions a minute.

Next he explained all that happened while Laura was out investigating. She ate his cold pizza on her bed in the hotel room they had rented. She was avidly interested in her first turned beta, Scott McCall. She wasn’t exactly happy to hear he was interested in Allison Argent. She was concerned about his shifts, but grateful Derek watched from afar so he didn’t cause too much trouble.

“And, how’s your boyfriend?” Laura smiled at him. Derek was in the middle of taking a bite out of his own cold pizza when she asked.

“I told you he’s not my boyfriend,” Derek growled at her.

“You were texting him the entire time I was showering,” Laura rolled her eyes as if this was the most obvious sign in the universe. “It’s such a struggle just to get you to call me to check in when were in the cities on our own.” In other words Derek was too invested in his conversations with Batman.

“He’s not my boyfriend.”

“He could be.”

“Laura…” Derek warned her with another growl half-way in-between a groan.

“Okay fine.” Laura went back to taking a bite of her pizza. She mumbled under her breath as she huffed at him, “Closeted pup.”


	4. Laura Hale Stays Dead

Laura couldn’t stop laughing. “Safe sex talk?” she bellowed and fell back onto her back. Derek shook his head. Laura wanted every detail Derek had about her new beta—even if Scott didn’t know Laura was the real Alpha. “Did he really ask his mom…” she coughed and lost her breath in the middle of laughing when she sat up again. Derek was actually afraid she might snort or start crying as she laughed. It wasn’t as if Derek had wanted to overhear that conversation.

“I followed him to the party,” Derek added solemnly. He hadn’t been exactly happy about crashing a teenage party with underage drinking. Not that he never drank when he was a teenager, but werewolves can’t get drunk by normal means. It was just extremely awkward and nerve wrecking when he was in the same room as Stiles who had no idea who he really was at the time.

“He’s in love with an Argent?” Laura asked with an amused but confused expression on her face. Derek couldn’t help but glare at his sister. It was dangerous enough that Scott was a bitten teenage werewolf who was too stubborn to actually want to learn how to control his shifts. The added danger with the Argents not just being in town, but this emotional teenager in love with the youngest Argent was hazardous.

Derek reluctantly nodded. He toss his half eaten pizza crust into the pizza box again.

“My gentlemanly little brother,” Laura sighed half-mockingly. The other half of her tone was actually very serious about Derek being a gentleman. He never told Laura who it was that had burned their home, but he knew she’d started investigating when she came back to Beacon Hills. She finished a pizza crust with one bite and picked up the last cold pizza.

Derek didn’t have to be told to order another pizza. Laura’s stomach was twice Derek’s size. He’d already dialed the pizza place when Laura predictably told him to order more with her mouth full. Derek shot her a disgusted look which reminded her that humans actually had table manners. She grinned and shrugged as a silent patronizing apology to him as he greeted the pizza man on the other line.

Laura didn’t speak to him again until the pizza came. So Derek looked through the messages Batman had sent him. Derek scrolled up to read the first message since he last replied.

_TheOnlyBatman: “Your ex-girlfriend burned down your place?”_

_TheOnlyBatman: “What did you do, cheat on her? Steal a million dollars from her account? Marry another girl?”_

_TheOnlyBatman: “Okay, maybe too personal a question.”_

Derek did agree that was too much of a personal question. It was too much of a personal revelation too. At some point Stiles would figure out Derek was Wolf89. He knew that wasn’t were Stiles stopped sending text messages. If allowed Stiles might carry an entire conversation on his own.

_TheOnlyBatman: “But what kind of mental case does that?”_

_TheOnlyBatman: “Did she use gasoline? Or did she just leave a candle on while you were gone?”_

_TheOnlyBatman: “Dude! Come on answer back. I know you didn’t go to sleep yet!”_

Derek made sure to school his face and try not to smile. Laura was throwing away her old clothes into a laundry bag and was trying to find a sweater or a jacket from inside their hotel closet. Derek already knew that instead of wearing her own fitting sweater she was going to pull out Derek’s leather jacket.

While she contemplated doing just that Derek read Batman’s next message.

_TheOnlyBatman: “You didn’t go to sleep did you? Oh god I hope I’m not bombarding you with text messages. You probably think I’m some weird high schooler with a giant crush on you.”_

“Your heart rate just went up.”

Derek looked up from his phone to his sister. She was definitely wearing his jacket. She sprawled out on her bed and faced Derek.

“Reading your little love notes?” Laura asked with her knowing smile.

“They’re not love notes.” Derek rolled his eyes and put his phone down. Laura huffed and dramatically rolled her eyes toward the ceiling as if to tell Derek he was being too juvenile about denying anything and everything she said. Derek wasn’t going to admit that he knew who his online friend was.

“Just be safe,” Laura mumbled as she pulled her pillow under her head.

“I can take care of myself,” Derek added.

“Derek,” Laura’s soft voice purred. She sat up, knees together as if she was some model shooting as a mermaid while sitting on a rock. She let his heavy leather jacket engulf her smaller frame. She almost seemed like a siren when she smiled at him. Derek scowled in reaction because he knew that smile. “I was talking about sex,” she smiled.

This time it was Derek getting up and telling his sister, “I am not having the safe sex talk with you.” It sounded juvenile, which proved Laura’s unsaid point, but Derek was 22 years old and did not need his sister to remind him that Stiles was an awkward 16-year-old kid.

“I was just telling you to be safe,” Laura shrugged. She smiled when Derek scowled even more angrily at her. “You never know, he might be some serial killer.”

“He’s not.”

“How do you know?”

Derek sighed. She didn’t know but she knew he did. At least she was trying to see if he did, and he just told her by denying the accusation.

“It’s easy to lie online, Derek,” Laura reminded him. She laid down and stretched out. Laura had always been the relaxed and flexible type, as if she was more feline than canine. “Even our sharp hearing can’t guess a lie off that.” Deep inside Derek tried to find the patience to sit through Laura’s sense of humor.

Derek prayed to himself that the pizza was delivered soon. He ignored her and sat on his bed to read the rest of the 27 messages from Batman.

_TheOnlyBatman: “I promise I don’t have a giant crush on you.”_

_TheOnlyBatman: “Not a giant one anyway.”_

What the hell did that mean? Derek was between angry and confusedly flattered. Of course it was Stiles, the little skinny twig he could break with a clench of his hand. He had a feeling this was Stiles being awkward and sarcastic. It sounded like something he would say when he wasn’t trying to be pathetically stupid.

 _TheOnlyBatman: “Alright, let me tell you about my day.”_ So Derek spent the next twenty minutes or so reading about Stiles’ day—AGAIN. He talked about hating his teachers, and how he was completely in love with a girl who had no idea he even existed. Then read about how she’d been attacked by a “monster” again. Derek was in the middle of reading about how in love “Robin” was with “Maid Marian”. Derek knew that was Allison Argent, he just didn’t know why Batman’s Robin became Robin Hood and Maid Marian. Next he was going to be told that Scott had a band of merry men.

He paid the pizza man and took the two pizzas in hand. He closed the door and set the pizza box down on the hotel’s table. Derek flipped open the top one and sat down at the table to eat the first slice. Laura growled at him was animalistic but not threatening. She bumped her hip against his arm when she came over. Derek growled back but shuffled over to the next chair when she sat down across from him.

Laura’s legs extended out and she rested both of them on top of the chair he’d just vacated. Derek minded his own business and ate his pizza. That was until he took a glance at how she was eating.

“Remember to chew,” Derek reminded her. Laura looked like she was scoffing down the damn thing. She growled at him again. “Predators have manners too,” Derek said mockingly. It was something she said to him often whenever he was apparently being rude. Not that he cared, but Laura was like their mother. She could shift into a full wolf and sometimes when she stayed that way for too long she forgot her humanity and the systems humans lived by. Such as manners and actually speaking.

“I have manners,” Laura scoffed at him.

“You can talk,” Derek said indulgingly, “That doesn’t mean you have manners.” Laura rolled her eyes again. He insisted, “Chew.”

“So, tell me about your boyfriend.”

“Don’t change the subject Laura,” Derek answered without missing a beat.

“What?”

“You’re not completely yourself yet,” Derek reminded her. Unlike their mother, Laura wasn’t used to being wolf and human and not just in-between. Laura had gotten that ability after the fire, just as she’d inherited the Alpha status.

Laura stopped talking and focused on eating. Derek went back to minding his own business and eating the pizza. She dramatically chewed each bite of pizza before swallowing because just to annoy him. Derek simply gazed up at her and gave her a smile that quickly disappeared into a scowl. It wasn’t cute or funny. Laura didn’t have full control whenever she came back from a full wolf shift. Their mother’s ability to shift into a wolf was rare and special, that Laura inherited it with the alpha status said a lot about their mother’s power and Laura’s potential. However, since the fire both of them have lived in cities to hide among human populations so Laura rarely shifted as constantly as they had living in Beacon Hills.

Derek finished first, as he wasn’t as ravenous as Laura. He went back to his bed in the small hotel room and laid down. He looked at the rest of the unread messages from Stiles. He was still going on incessantly about his day when his last line had a single question that had Derek holding his breath.

“What’s wrong?” Laura asked him as she sat down on her bed next to his. Derek didn’t answer, his eyes were still glued on to the phone’s screen. Was he reading those words correctly? “Your heart rate just shot up. Derek?”

Derek locked his phone and tried not to groan out. He pinched the space between his eyes and took in a deep breath. He had known Stiles was annoying but he never thought Stiles would be so irritating. Derek took his time ignoring his sister and trying to calm himself down. She was being just as annoying.

“What’s going on, Derek?” Laura sat down at his side and ran her hand through his hair. She had this strange fixation with running her hand through his hair and petting his head, and then by pulling at the ends of his hair even though they were so short. “This is a strange scent for you. It’s like…”

“Shut up.”

Derek moved away from his sister. He didn’t want her to say it because he didn’t want to believe it. One single question from a 16-year-old boy who didn’t even know who he was, and Derek felt as if he’d gone back in time before he’d met Kate. He felt conflicted and he couldn’t believe in it. Each time he believed in this emotion it exhilarated him but it had always hurt him and disappointed him. So he chose to ignore the feelings those words he read gave him.

“Alright so tell me the rest,” Laura said. Her voice had gone gentle and although he could tell she was becoming more human she wasn’t entirely separated yet from the wild.

Derek sighed and took prepared himself to tell Laura the rest. They talked, he recounted his investigation and she asked questions. Sometimes she laughed—mostly when it was about Stiles and Scott. He’d forgotten what it was like to just talk and genuinely enjoy someone’s goodhearted laughter. Laura laughed so openly as if she’d forgotten what it was like to laugh so joyously as well. Perhaps they had.

“Are you okay?” Laura grabbed at him when he got to telling her about earlier in the day when Derek had been confronted at the mansion by Kate and her goons. Laura felt for any injuries but Derek rolled his eyes at her concern. Werewolves healed after all. “How are you feeling?” she then asked. Laura touched his forehead and ran her hand through his hair again. “Is she the reason you’re feeling…” Laura stopped from finishing exactly what she was going to say when he shot her a threatening glare. Normally that would be considered a challenge to the Alpha, but she knew Kate was not a subject he wanted to talk about on a personal level. “Is that why you were feeling like that earlier?” she reworded her question.

“No,” he answered. “Of course not.”

“Of course not,” she repeated in a sigh.

So he went on to explain how everyone believed Laura had been the she-wolf who had been killed by Peter. As they discussed both of them decided it would be best if she kept in the shadows and leave town. If they thought she was dead for now it was to their best advantage. Derek pushed the idea that Laura should leave to continue tracking Cora even though there had been no signs of her. Laura reluctantly agreed but told him that he had to regularly update her. Derek promised he would call if it was an emergency, but she needed to leave before Peter caught her scent or the Argents realize she wasn’t actually dead.

When they both settled down to bed Derek unlocked his phone and stared at his screen. He knew exactly why it was Stiles asked the question—especially considering what he’d been telling him about in his messages, but Derek couldn’t stop what he felt and he hated himself. It was a strange sense of hope and excitement and dread all balled up deep inside his chest. He sighed at the message before locking his phone again and sticking it under his pillow so he could go back to sleep.

Derek fell asleep with the words in his mind appearing over and over again in the dark.

_“Would you consider dating me?”_


	5. Night Chat

He hadn’t replied. Stiles groaned in annoyance as he tried not to crush his cell phone in his hand. Next he tried for a deep breath. Wolf89 was the only person Stiles had as an outlet because of the anonymity of being online friends. He couldn’t just ruin all that because the guy didn’t know how to check his messages. Okay, well Stiles was probably some annoying teenager looking for attention in that old man’s perspective anyway. The guy might have better things to do like take care of his family. He might be married, right?

Somehow that thought horrified him. Oh God, what if Wolf89 was some married guy who goes online to stalk teenagers? Or, what if Wolf89 was some married guy who was in the closet and gay or something worse? Stiles tried not to think about more horrifying thoughts but he couldn’t help it. This was him after all. Stiles mind ran a hundred miles a minute.

He was even frustrated with Scott. So he was even more frustrated when Wolf89 didn’t respond. Stiles was not in a good mood at all, so he did was he could. He got back at Scott by keying someone’s car. That was what made Scott his best friend too, was that even knowing Stiles was getting back at him he still let Stiles do it.

When he and Scott finally got out of detention Stiles couldn’t wait any longer. He opened up the app on his phone and paused when he saw his last message. _“Would you consider dating me?”_ He had only asked out of curiosity but now that he was thinking about it that did seem like he was asking Wolf89 out. With a shake of his head Stiles steeled his nerves and texted Wolf89 again.

_“Hah, I did the one thing AMC couldn’t do!”_

Of course what happened after he typed that was probably the worst possible outcome. Being locked in the school at night wasn’t the worse thing he could imagine, but being chased around by a psychotic werewolf as if this was a horror movie? Yeah, that was freaking crazy.

And Wolf89 still hadn’t replied back.

He knew because he’d sent the guy a crazy ton of messages while they were running around the school. He’d even refused to call his dad because he didn’t want his father involved and he hoped to see the reply as soon as possible. He knew it was going to be a cold reply because they’ve never met but this was his only solace out of all the crazy.

At least they survived, although he couldn’t say much for Derek. His body was missing and Scott had thrown him under the bus. So now everyone in California was looking for Derek Hale the mass murderer. Also, Allison pretty much broke up with Scott too. So it was back to him and Scott again.

Even still he waited.

* * *

 

Derek fought back a groan. He reached out instinctively and a slender hand grabbed his. He knew the hand, he knew the soft gentle touch patting his forehead and running fingers through his hair. Derek held tightly to her hand and slowly opened his eyes.

“Laura…”

“Glad I turned back,” Laura smiled down at him. She sat with him on his hotel bed as he shifted so he could sit up. “I need you to breathe,” Laura whispered. Derek rolled his eyes and glared at his older sister. Her hand gripped tighter and Derek felt the pain slowly recede.

“Stop,” Derek pushed out the word. He ripped his hand away from hers. Laura’s eyes flashed red and slowly turned back to her green eyes. Derek focused on her eye color to stop from noticing the pain coming back. Laura’s eyes were always a little more cobalt, more hazel in color than his eyes. Cora’s eyes were always a light brown, they were almost golden in lighting. Peter’s eyes were blue… blue like his wolf eyes.

“He’s definitely an Alpha,” Laura commented. Derek brought his attention back to reality. He wasn’t entirely sure how long he’d been unconscious but he was certain that it wouldn’t take this long to heal a wound from another shifter. Derek had to begrudgingly agree that Peter was definitely an Alpha now.

Laura stood up and had him roll over onto his stomach. Derek felt the bandage pulled off from his back. He braced himself as Laura examined the wound on his back again.

“It’s healing. He’s not strong enough.”

“He was different,” Derek added. He didn’t have a good look at Peter but his memory wasn’t faulty.

“How different?”

“He didn’t look like us. It was like he was a beast.” Explaining it was a little difficult. Derek only caught a glimpse of him when he was tossed onto the ground after being nearly skewered.

“A wolf?” Laura asked in shock.

“No,” Derek shook his head. “More like in between. Like he was trying to become a wolf but he couldn’t.” Derek couldn’t quite explain it. Perhaps Peter really thought that he had taken Laura’s powers inherited by their mother. It might be why he was stuck in that stage whenever he tried transforming. Nearly wolf but more monster than animal.

His mother had been a rare werewolf, she had been the only one he’d ever seen who could transform entirely from wolf to human. With the Alpha power inherited by Laura from their mother, his sister was also able to do so. He wondered then if Peter was capable of shifting into a wolf, or if that beastly form was what happened when a werewolf was feral.

“So that unidentified girl…” Laura’s voice faded. Derek nodded. Peter somehow managed to find a different Alpha to kill. Very likely an Alpha without a pack. “Maybe she came for the same reason.” Laura meant the flyer with the deer that had a spiral in its side. She’d shown it to him before and it had been why he assumed the veterinarian was the one helping Peter. Derek just couldn’t believe the recklessness of an Alpha without a pack. Walking into a vendetta was suicide, and that Jane Doe had been killed by Peter.

They spoke for some time, creating theories about the situation at hand. Derek also updated her on Scott. Laura no longer called him her beta. Peter was trying to get Scott to join his pack, oblivious to the fact that he had not been the one who turned him. Laura had given Scott zero guidance, meaning she laid no claim over the beta she had created.

“Still,” she had said with a quiet smile and distant gaze, “I don’t mind hearing about him.” Scott was after all the first and only human she had ever given the bite. If anything Laura felt a quiet connection to Scott because what she’d done was only to save him. She wanted to be assured that he could live as a werewolf.

Not much after finishing their conversation on Scott they both laid down to sleep again. Derek could barely sleep with the wound on his back, but he managed somehow to drift off into the dark. In his sleep he forgot the pain.

“Derek. Derek.” He heard his sister whisper as he was waking up from the pain. Derek blinked into the dark, ignoring the pain. “Your phone,” Laura handed him his phone. Derek could tell he was healing. It was healing a lot quicker than expected because Peter had no pack but still much slower than usual.

Derek made a face back at Laura’s suggestive eyebrows. He opened the app and read _TheOnlyBatman_ ’s long rants, including his explanation on how he managed to teach _Robin_ how to control his “angry outbursts”. Derek didn’t bother turning on the lamp on his side since he didn’t want to bother Laura. Not like his eyesight would get worse from staring at a screen in the dark.

“Anchor…” Derek whispered. He had been surprised when Scott displayed control over his werewolf abilities. Derek wondered if Laura had an anchor too, or if she had simply learned to control her abilities. Anger had always been his trigger—something he’d learned from Peter. Derek stifled a growl, trying to hold back the bitter thought.

“Hm?” Laura turned on her side to him.

“Nothing.”

Derek continued reading the updates and random topics from Stiles. Mostly the kid talked about his ten year plan to get the love of his life to marry him or something. Derek rolled his eyes whenever Stiles gushed over her. Derek couldn’t tell if his love was pure or if he was just stupidly horomonal. Finally he got to the last message sent by Stiles thirty minutes ago. It simply asked him: _“Are you there?”_

He sat staring at his phone in the dark for a long while. Derek took in a deep breath and typed his response.

_Wolf89: “Yes.”_

Minutes later he got a text back.

_TheOnlyBatman: “Where have you been?!”_

Derek looked upwards and held for patience, trying not to roll his eyes at Stiles. He couldn’t exactly say he was in the middle of investigating who had been helping Peter with his vendetta. It was clear now from his discussion with Laura that Peter had definitely been out for revenge. He also couldn’t say he’d been literally stabbed in the back and could have died if Laura hadn’t shown up to get him. Of course now he was a damn fugitive thanks to two idiots.

_Wolf89: “Busy. Adult stuff.”_

_TheOnlyBatman: “Oh yeah right, like ‘adult stuff’ is an excuse for anything.”_

_Wolf89: “You’re only sixteen.”_

_TheOnlyBatman: “So.”_

_Wolf89: “What would you know?”_

_TheOnlyBatman: “A freaking lot.”_

Derek decided against responding and waited. Twenty minutes later Derek felt his phone vibrate against his chest and he turned on the app. As expected Stiles had written back again. He was, of course, changing the subject. This time he was telling Derek the history of Batman as Bruce Wayne. Derek could almost hear Stiles sitting next to him just going on and on.

_Wolf89: “I see.”_

_TheOnlyBatman: “Okay, but for real. It’s like super late. Aren’t you like married or something?”_

Derek almost choked. Instead he hissed out from trying to abruptly sit up. He threw back the pillow Laura threw at him. She’d been grumbling for him to go to sleep but he’d ignored her.

_TheOnlyBatman: “Hello?”_

_Wolf89: “I am not married.”_

His hands were shaking. Derek took in a deep breath and tried to calm himself down. Laura could hear him. Another deep breath. Slowly he laid down. Deep breath. This was Stiles, overly excited, weak, human, 16-year-old Stiles. Derek had to get used to the kid’s antics. Most importantly he shouldn’t be affected by those antics.

_TheOnlyBatman: “Oh. So lonely bachelor. You don’t live in your mom’s basement do you?”_

_Wolf89: “No.”_ He didn’t mention the fact that his family’s house was burned down, or about the basement cellar where his family had been burned alive. Stiles already knew part of the story, he didn’t need to know that Wolf89 shared the same story as Derek Hale.

_TheOnlyBatman: “Okay, I’ll believe you for now. Still, you’ve got to agree it’s a little creepy you never really talk about yourself.”_

_Wolf89: “I’m going through some stuff.”_

_TheOnlyBatman: “You said that before too!”_

And that was exactly how Derek stayed up until 4 o’clock in the morning. Derek couldn’t help but crack a smile when Stiles finally realized what time it was. He laid his buzzing phone on his chest and closed his eyes. It would take time to heal completely so the only thing he had to do was sit around.

Derek woke up in the afternoon on his side. Laura had the radio in the hotel room turned on to the Beacon Hills news. Not much of it was news really, just another news report on “Derek Hale the mass murderer fugitive”. He was angry about it, considering that Scott threw him under the bus like Stiles mentioned.

“You sure don’t look happy,” Laura chuckled. She put down the three pizza boxes she’d just carried in and toss Derek’s wallet on the bed. Derek slowly sat up, he could feel the wound still healing. “Let’s eat and then we’ll look at that nasty hole in your back.” Derek rolled his eyes this time.

He stood up, carefully moving. Laura put herself under his arm to support him over to the table. Derek sucked in a sharp breath each time he took a step. Once he was seated Laura collapsed in her chair across from him.

Derek looked at the label on the box. Two meat-lover pizzas and one supreme. It was very unlike Laura, so Derek could only guess she was still struggling between her wolf personality and her human personality. Derek took a bit out of the supreme, as it was the only thing with vegetable on it.

At some point Laura notices Derek’s phone on the best. She probably sensed it vibrating like he had. He ignored that she noticed, simply eating his third silence of pizza as he listened to the radio.

“Your phone,” Laura finally said.

“I know.”

“Your boyfriend?”

“He’s not my boyfriend.” Derek didn’t even want to broach the topic that his sister considered him bisexual. Not that he was or wasn’t, but that they never talked about it and she simply suspected it was rather annoying. Laura always did act as if she knew everything about Derek. Not like she was better than him, but like an older sister she always treated Derek as someone who could never hide a single thing from him. But he had hid something from her, something that had brought them all back to Beacon Hills. The fire.

“So you’re not going to answer it.”

“It’s lunch time.”

“Okay?”

“No.”

“Closeted pup,” Laura hissed under her breath with a smile. Derek ignored it and went for his next pizza.


	6. Romeo and Juliet

It’d only been a week since the attack in the school last Wednesday night. Stiles sat against the wall next to Scott’s bedroom door. Betrayal didn’t sting as he’d expected. It didn’t feel like an emotional slap in the face. It was more like some rotting hand had his heart in its clutches. Scott was struggling against being handcuffed to his heater but what was Stiles supposed to do? He tried collecting himself but it didn’t work.

With a deep breath he tried to calm down and think. His phone vibrated and Stiles stared at the screen. The only person who would text him was Wolf89. He opened the application and stared at the message from his online free.

_Wolf89: “How are things?”_

How were things? Stiles sighed and pounded his head against the wall. He heard Scott trying to convince him to take off the cuffs from the heater. While he knew he couldn’t do that, Stiles didn’t know what else he could do either.

 _TheOnlyBatman: “My friend and I…”_ Stiles sent part of the sentence but didn’t send the other half. He couldn’t finish it. How could he explain and ask for advice without talking about werewolves?

_Wolf89: “Having a fight?”_

Stiles gave a little smile even though he felt no joy at the moment. _“Yeah, something like that.”_

_Wolf89: “Couldn’t be that bad.”_

_TheOnlyBatman: “He made out with her!”_ And then Stiles went off on the guy. He texted about how betrayed he’d felt. After all Scott had known how he’d always felt for Lydia. Yet, because of all his werewolf-y crap he—

_TheOnlyBatman: “I’m pissed. I can’t believe he would do that. And I know it’s because he’s not in his right mind after breaking up with Maid Marian. Did he really have to go after MY Catwoman though?”_

_Wolf89: “I see.”_

Stiles was too overwhelmed now to take Wolf89’s indifference. So he quickly typed back, _“No! Not ‘I see’. This time you tell me. Tell me what I’m supposed to do.”_

There was no response from him then. Then Scott had started to shout while Stiles struggled on his own with what to do. He was supposed to stay strong and to immovable, he had to be his friend—his brother’s keeper. Scott wasn’t in his right mind to make rational decisions, but the betrayal hurt Stiles too much. Was this too much for him? Could he not have done more?

“Scot are you okay?” Stiles asked when he heard silence. He opened the door then and saw the blood smears. Scott had gotten out of the cuffs and gone out the window. Stiles didn’t have time to panic but he was panicking.

Rushing down the steps he quickly texted Wolf89. _“Sorry gtg. I lost my friend and he’s not in his right mind after the breakup.”_ Stiles slipped his phone into his pocket and closed the house door. He jumped into his jeep then and drove.

* * *

 

Derek stared at the text on his phone. _“I lost my friend,”_ the message had said. Only he knew what Stiles really meant. Derek took a whiff of the air. Stiles meant Scott had gotten out of whatever cage or captivity he’d used to hold Scott for the full moon.

Derek burst into a dead run. There was no point trying to find Scott by his own scent. There was only one person Scott would head to—Allison. Derek found her scent with the other kid, the one a little to symmetric and pretty for his own good. He stalked the car the two were sitting in and waited for Scott to show himself.

The kid was too far gone to have noticed Derek. When he finally jumped on to their car and was about to tear through the metal that was when Derek pounced. He grabbed Scott and threw him into the woods outlining the parking lot.

Angry and confused with the full moon’s sway Scott tried to fight back. Derek dodged and shoved him. He waited for his change and grabbed Scott, throwing the kid over his shoulder and slamming him into the ground. He roared into the kid’s face and forced dominance over him.

Scott pulled back then, finally collecting himself back from the sway of the full moon. He asked Derek what was happening to him but they both already knew.

“Exactly what he wants to happen,” Derek had answered. He and Laura had theorized, just as Scott probably had, just exactly what Peter wanted Scott to do. Scott had friends he cared about and to join Peter’s pack he needed Scott to kill his old pack first. Considering how young and emotional he was and with the full moon all Peter had to do was sit and wait for Scott to do it himself.

After he was certain that Scott had fully regained control of himself, Derek helped the boy up. He pulled Scott up he was still too sore and exhausted to walk on his own. Scott almost collapsed, a sign of embarrassment and weakness he had asked Derek not tell anyone. The only person he had to tell anything was Laura so he only rolled his eyes as a response.

“Right,” Scott said, as if he forgot Derek had no one to talk to. He knew he came off a bit like a loner. The only shifters Scott ever met was Peter and Derek so he didn’t really understand how their kind works. Community was the base of the ideology, something he had to remember and it was why he had the tattoo on his back. It had to be a constant reminder to him when one betrays their community the way he had.

He shouldered Scott into his Camaro then drove them back to Scott’s house. Well, he drove them close to a block or two away. He was still being hunted after all, and his back had only just healed. Derek couldn’t exactly be on the run without Laura giving him the okay. He hadn’t told her he’d gone out, so when she got back with the Chinese food she was likely going to snarling at him.

Scott groaned when he tried to get out on his own. Derek got out of his and helped Scott out of the car. He didn’t try to let Scott walk on his own. It was very obvious that the kid couldn’t stand yet after having exerted so much on his second full moon. Derek waited as Scott fumbled with his keys to unlock his front door. Then he helped the kid up the stairs and into his room.

He dropped Scott onto his bed. “Thanks,” Scott breathed out. Then as Derek tried to leave Scott called out, “Wait.” He turned back around, annoyed again. He already knew that Scott was going to do whatever he wanted without really thinking about what was really going on in the background. Whether he wanted to or not, Scott was a werewolf—a part of something bigger with much larger consequences for every decision. “I can’t do this,” he said to Derek. “I can’t be this and be with Allison. I need you to tell me the truth.” Derek knew exactly what he was going to say next. “Is there a cure?”

Derek took in a deep breath. Once bitten it couldn’t be reversed, at least from his knowledge. He’d never seen a bitten werewolf want to turn back. After all a bitten was always someone who knew exactly what they were getting into. Usually, anyways. He couldn’t quite say it was true for every alpha who turned humans.

“For someone who was bitten?” So he gave the best answer he could give, “I’ve heard of one. I don’t know if it’s true.” It was a legend if anything. Laura had told him while his back was still healing. She’d said it jokingly, telling him she’d heard of it elsewhere but wasn’t sure if it was true. She’d laughed as if it really was just a joke but it wasn’t.

“Well, what is it?” Scott asked expectantly.

Derek tried not to grind his teeth. “You have to kill that one that bit you.” Only he wasn’t going to tell Scott that it was Laura who had bit him and saved him. He wasn’t going to let anyone take his family from him, not even Peter.

“Kill the Alpha?” Scott nearly gasped, almost paling as he thought of trying to kill Peter. Very obviously it sounded unbelievable to the kid.

Then he realized Scott was actually considering it. He didn’t know it wasn’t Peter but Laura who bit him, and Derek could use it. He could use that determination because he couldn’t allow Laura to die. She was his only family left after all.

“Scott.” He took a step forward himself. “If you help me find him, I’ll help you kill him.” And that was how they ended up working together.

 

“Are you seriously going to do this?” Laura asked him quietly. She’d been angry with him for going out but Derek had explained why he had. Laura put her forehead against his and breathed in his scent before pulling away. “You’re going to declare war against our uncle, Derek.”

“I’m defending my alpha,” he growled. Laura was still his alpha and Derek knew he was supposed to do as she said, but he couldn’t turn a blind eye. She was more than his alpha and he was more than just her pack member—they were family.

Laura rolled her eyes. She dropped down onto Derek’s hotel bed next to him. She laid across his bed and stared at the ceiling, grabbing him by the elbow and making him lie down next to her too. He put an arm under his head and stared at the ceiling with Laura. Since they were in one of the more expensive, fancy hotels he was staring at fancy light fixtures. It was one of those ceilings with cylinder holes so the lights were hanging off the ceiling. It made the room dimmer, which meant they also needed to turn on the lamps by the bedside.

She moved her hand and brushed his hair with her fingers. Derek sighed and turned his head to his sister. She smiled with that gentle look in her eyes. He just knew she was going to say something that was going to get on his nerve.

“You and I both know that we haven’t been a pack for a long time.”

Derek turned back to staring at the ceiling with another deep breath. He knew it was going to get on his nerve. They were a pack, even if neither of them lived close to each other. Even if they were the only two in the pack, Derek always knew someday they would both return. Beacon Hills was their home, it was their responsibility after all.

“Hey,” Laura grabbed at him. Derek turned his head back to Laura. She looked him right in the eyes. She held his gaze. “You will always have a place with me, pack or no pack.”

Derek smiled at his sister. Truly smile. “And I will always defend you.” _From anyone who threatens to hurt you._ Laura leaned her head and pressed her forehead to his. All they had were each other and Derek couldn’t give that up for the world.

“Alright, I’m going to shower and then sleep.” Laura patted his leg and sat up. She stretched and then grabbed Derek’s phone from off the table where their leftover dinner was. She toss the phone onto the bed. It landed next to him and he sighed because he could hear his vibration going off. “Don’t stay up all night texting your boyfriend, or I’ll break your phone.”

“Not my boyfriend,” Derek groaned.

Laura laughed out loud. “Closeted pup,” she chuckled. Derek rolled his eyes. He was starting to get annoyed with her little quip.

He laid where he was and picked up his phone. He looked at the messages from _TheOnlyBatman_. It was mostly a long update of what happened after he’d told Derek about Scott escaping. He’d seen the handcuff lying on Scott’s bedroom floor and the blood smears on the floor and heater. Stiles had panicked over his father and Derek understood the worry and pain. Then about meeting up with Scott after and hearing about their deal.

Derek yawned. He stripped and pulled on a pair of sweats. He slipped into his bed under the covers and read the rest of the texts.

Derek was going to hate himself in the future, he just knew that. He didn’t regret what he was doing now. He tampered down those strange pulls he felt inside his core, he ignored his honor and his sister’s expectations. Yet he just knew in the future that Stiles was going to find out who was his _Wolf89_ and not only was he going to feel betrayed, foolish and alone, he was never going to be able to see Derek the same again. Normally he wouldn’t mind, but as Wolf89 he did. As the person who managed to pull himself out of the gutter, to be salvaged by _TheOnlyBatman_ ’s ravings online, it mattered that Stiles would be hurt by the truth.

“I can smell the uneasiness you know,” Laura said in the dead silence. Derek turned around and stared at her sitting on her own bed in the hotel. She was dressed in a tank top and shorts, a towel around her neck as she rubbed her wavy hair dry. She looked him in the eyes and her Alpha eyes flashed at him. He responded, knowing his eyes flashed blue back to her. “What did he write to you?” she asked, sounding slightly worried and mostly territorial.

“He’s just talking about how he was afraid Peter might have killed his father,” Derek responded. He had been very careful about not telling Laura anything about Stiles. He sat up and prepared himself to give her some of the basic information.

“Peter?” Laura’s eyes widened and she leaned forward. Her eyes glowered into a gentle half-lidded look. In a dark voice she asked him, “Are you seducing Scott McCall?”

Derek didn’t even want to respond to his sister. She stared at her without so much as a reaction but she stared back at him waiting for his answer.

Deep breath. Deep breath. Derek inhaled through his nose and tried to slowly exhale from his mouth. He gathered the will to look at his sister one more time.

“No.”

“But you just said Peter.” Laura barely got the words out when she gasped. Her hand flew to her mouth and her fingers stretched out to her lips. Derek tried not to roll his eyes but he did. “You don’t mean-” She gasped again and stopped herself dramatically mid-sentence. Derek sighed. Laura had the character of their mother but the dramatics of their uncle before he’d been burned. It made her an annoying older sister and an even more annoying alpha.

Laura quickly moved and sat down next to him. She sidled up next to him until their hips pressed together. Laura grabbed his arm, snuggling it close, and squealed like some girl in one of those cartoons she used to watch. What was it called? _Sailor Moon?_ Something-something Cats? No, _Mew Mew Cats? Was it Powerpuff Girls? Mew Mew Power?_ Derek ignored his headache from trying to remember his childhood. He shouldn’t think about it too much after all.

“Is it him?” Laura asked excitedly. He could hear her heart jumping and could sense her elation. Derek sighed. “You’re in love with a human!”

Derek bit back the groan threatening to come out. “I’m not in love with him. He’s not my boyfriend.” Derek just knew in the future he was going to feel bad. “He’s the sheriff’s son.”

“Oh my god, you’re in love with the sheriff’s son!” Laura bounced up and down excitedly. Derek didn’t bother correcting his sister this time. Laura was not going to listen. Whatever delusion was in her mind was not going to change any time soon. “It’s such a cute romance.”

This time Derek did groan. He knew what she was going to say next and it tore him up inside.

“It’s like Romeo and Juliet!” Laura hugged him and then finally pulled away. She laughed as she kicked her legs out and then dropped onto the bed. “He’s the sheriff’s son fighting for his friend, and you’re the nephew of the guy they see as their enemy. Sons from opposing sides.” Laura giggled. “Oh I love this. I can’t believe you kept this to yourself.”

Derek didn’t want to think about something else that was similar to Romeo and Juliet. His gut twisted even more. He had to remember Scott McCall and Allison Argent, and from remembering them he thought about his past with Kate Argent.

“Tell me more,” Laura practically demanded. She shot up and rushed to their leftover Chinese food. She pulled out her chair by the wall and patted the tabletop. Derek sighed, got up and walked to his seat. He sat opposite her and grabbed one of the cartons and a new set of chopsticks.

Derek started out explaining how they’d met online, and how exactly Stiles’ little banters online with him had helped Derek finish his course. Some of this she’d already known but he’d been ambiguous. Then he explained how they both started texting using an anonymous app. Derek didn’t tell her everything, because this was his private life. While she enjoyed knowing what her little brother was doing on his own time in secret, he also wasn’t obligated to entirely tell her how he felt, what he told Stiles or what Stiles told him. He did tell her about the fact that he’d been picking up some choice information from Stiles as his confidant. She’d even been sympathetic over the fact that Derek was using what Stiles told him as a way to spy on the two’s plans.

“You’re playing a dangerous game Romeo,” Laura pointed her chopsticks at him. Derek looked down at his carton and went for the cold noodles. He reached for the carton with the stir-fry to add on top of the noodles in his carton. “Hey,” Laura called and waved her hand. Derek handed her the rest of the vegetable stir-fry and started eating again. “Or are you Juliet in this scenario?” she asked randomly.

Derek’s head snapped up. _What the hell_.

“You know because you refuse to fall in love with anyone, and then you fell in love with him online without knowing who each other are.” Laura launched into her fun, poking similarities of the Shakespearean tragedy with him. “Then you do, you know, fall in love.” She winked at him. “You just deny it. It’ll take time, don’t worry.” Laura waved her hand as if dismissing any argument Derek had on that. He refused to fall in love like a sixteen-year-old boy again. He hadn’t been the only one burned by it. “And then you find out who he is—the sheriff’s son, the best friend to the new bitten chased by Peter. Think about it, how much despair must you feel?”

“Are you saying that I’m sitting around lamenting waiting for Stiles to come to my bedroom window, climb up and serenade me?” Derek actually imagined it, but he couldn’t quite imagine it. He could imagine Stiles attempting that beneath Lydia Martin’s window—he’d seen her how, he just might manage climbing up onto the roof after a couple stumbling attempts. He just couldn’t imagine Stiles doing that outside Derek’s hotel considering they were at least ten stories high.

Laura chuckled. “We’re in the modern age Derek.” Derek sighed. He fell into that one alright. “Back in my dad we called them mixtapes.” Derek almost choked but he managed to school his face. Back in her day? Laura wasn’t that old. If she had a “back in my day” then Derek definitely had a “back in my day” too. “He’s smart right? He’s definitely going to make you save him.”

“Like hell.”

“You’re a protector Derek, he’ll get you to save him somehow.”

Derek rolled his eyes and refused to respond. Stiles was a skinny high school kid with bad fashion sense and clumsiness to spare. He was also human. That didn’t mean he had to save the kid if he went and got himself killed.

He refused to believe he would do all he could to save Stiles because of some bent sense of honor or respect. He refused to think about love. He definitely, absolutely refused to trust Stiles Stilinski. Derek vehemently refused to believe they were some kind of tragic Romeo and Juliet teen love story.


	7. Method of Investigation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Scenes from 1x09 Wolf's Bane

It had taken a lot of pleading on Derek’s part to get Laura to agree to stay “dead” for a while longer. Derek got her to agree to let him take over her investigations on the fire. Although Derek knew who was behind the fire, and he’d always blamed them for it, he’d never truly looked into Kate’s plot.

He’d gotten the last person Laura went to see as well as the sketched picture from him. Derek was making his way to meet this guy Harris with his own specific questions when he heard Peter and the man talking.

“Please don’t kill me,” Adrian Harris pleaded. His back faced Peter, and when Derek took a quick glance from the classroom door window he saw that Peter was much more humanoid. He was no longer between beast and man. Peter had gotten stronger and closer to being werewolf again.

“Do you know _who_ wrote that list?” Peter softly growled.

“Laura—Laura Hale.”

“Do you know why she was looking for you? I know why.” Derek decided not to race in just yet. Those words were accusing Harris of something, and with Peter’s next words he knew. “Turn around, Adrian. Turn around and I’ll show you. Turn around!” Peter demanded. His voice echoed from his throat.

“No. Please!” Harris pleaded, fear rolling off him.

“Look at me. Look at what you’ve done!”

“Get down!” Derek shouted as he rushed in. He grabbed Harris and they both knelt down, Derek covering the man, as a chair flew into the chalkboard.

The monster had already snuck out just as Derek got up to face off with Peter. Within seconds lights flashed from outside. The police had surrounded the building as if they knew he would be there. As if someone had tipped them off. Derek held back a groan. Peter was devious and sly, as if he wasn’t a wolf but a fox. He hadn’t just recovered physically but his mind was too. He’d known Derek would follow Laura’s trail.

Despite being told not to leave the building Derek made a run for it anyway. He’d sent Scott to drive around in his car to give Kate a wild goose chase. He had hoped it would keep the hunters at bay while he met with Harris. Instead Derek was chased by the cops into the ironworks and one of the Argents managed to still find him.

When Scott, and apparently Stiles, showed up with his car he was almost surprised. He ran inside quickly before he’d been caught.

“What part of laying low don’t you understand?” Scott shouted angrily as he drove.

Derek could have cared less about Scott’s demands. Frustration boiled up inside. He slammed the dashboard. “Dammit I had him!” Derek wanted to rip Peter apart.

“Who, the Alpha?” Stiles gasped from the backseat. For some reason he was right in Derek’s face. It was a small car but did he have to be breathing an inch away from Derek’s lips?

“YES!” he turned and snapped at Stiles. Why was Stiles in his car anyways? He didn’t need to smell TWO sixteen-year-old virgins in his car. Especially Stiles. “He was right in front of me, and the friggin’ police showed up.” Derek exhaled a deep breath of frustration.

Stiles quickly defended the police in a relaxed tone. “Oh, hey. They’re just doing their jobs…” Derek glared at him. How dare he or Scott even think so much as to pacify the tone of the situation? Stiles quickly backed down.

“Yeah. Thanks to someone who decided to make me the most wanted fugitive in the entire state.” Derek wasn’t over it yet either. He wanted to wring both of their necks. Neither of them had the right to try and pacify the situation.

“Can we seriously get past that?” Scott responded, trying to drive quickly away from the police and the Argents. Derek wasn’t going to get past it but he was going to let it go once he killed Peter with Scott’s help. “I made a dumbass mistake. I get it.” Scott sighed right after saying it, as if he’d been holding in some great big secret. It wasn’t even an apology so Derek didn’t care.

“Alright!” Stiles shouted, waved, and lurched forward from the backseat. Derek wasn’t going to hear the end of it from Laura if she smelled Stiles’ scent in the backseat of his car. “How did you find him?”

Instead of answering Derek glared and looked away.

“Can you try to trust us for half a second?” Scott exhaled. Derek wasn’t exactly ready to trust either kids. Especially Scott McCall who was obviously willing to kill someone at the off-chance he might be human again so he could be with Allison Argent. A hunter of all things.

“Yeah, _both_ of us,” Stiles said. Derek scowled at him. He wanted to rip the kid’s throat out just for being here at all. “Or just him. I’ll be back here.” He pulled back and gave up.

Derek sighed. He’d told Laura he would take charge of the investigation on the fire and Peter’s burns. Derek knew who started the fire, and how she managed to trap them all in the house in the basement. Very quickly he’d realized what Peter was looking for. Everyone who had been a part of starting the fire. Except, Derek was one of them. Derek was the entire reason Kate Argent had known about them and burned their home.

“Look the last time I talked to my sister, she was close to figuring something out.” Derek wasn’t exactly lying. The last time he had spoken with Laura had been her explaining where she was in the investigation. The reason he’d followed her to Beacon Hills was because she’d also announced closing in on some new information about the fire from six years ago. “She found two things. The first was a guy named Harris.”

Very quickly Stiles pulled forward up in Derek’s face again and asked, “Our chemistry teacher?” As if he couldn’t believe their teacher couldn’t have done anything. Sadly, he could have. After all how else could one figure out the best way to burn down a mansion in the middle of the forest without starting a forest fire?

“Why him?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“What’s the second?”

“Some kind of symbol.” Derek unfolded the paper Laura had given him from his pocket. It was the sketch of some sort of emblem. Derek noticed Scott’s reaction right away. He was mentally sighing to himself with a roll of his eyes in disbelief. “What?” Derek asked him, trying not to be threatening. “You know what this is?”

“I’ve seen it on a necklace,” Scott admitted. With an inward groan Scott stepped on the gas and confessed, “Allison’s necklace.”

Derek tried not to groan the entire time Scott drove back to his house. He glared at Stiles as the boy stumbled out of his car. Derek closed the passenger door and walked around to the driver side. He didn’t say goodbye to the two as he slipped in. He held back a sigh when he realized Scott had adjusted his seat. He spent the next minute readjusting the seat before finally driving off. He drove around for fifteen minutes to make sure the Argents weren’t waiting around the corner or tailing him.

“Hey,” Laura smiled at him from her hotel bed. Derek sighed again. He sat down on his bed and began to unlace his shoes. “How was tonight?”

“Peter almost killed Harris.”

“What?”

“Leave it Laura,” Derek sighed out tiredly. He took off his jacket and laid it down next to him. She opened her mouth to speak but he stopped her. “You promised you wouldn’t get involved.”

“I promised to stay dead.”

“So stay dead. Don’t get involved.” Derek let that be the end of their conversation. She spent the next hour stifling him with her half-lidded glare that could smother. It was like she was silently judging him, or waiting for an opening to kill him. Laura really was more feline than canine.

He was going to take a shower when something came up in his head. They had changed the hotel reservation from Derek’s name to Laura’s. They had even changed rooms but the hotel couldn’t give out their names or information because of their privacy policy. Derek clenched his teeth as he finally realized he was really a fugitive now.

“Laura, we have to leave.” Derek started putting on his shoes again. She glared at him openly. “I’m a fugitive remember?”

“And?”

“I was just chased across town by the Argents and the police,” Derek reminded her. Both of them knew it wasn’t the smartest to move to their old home because the Argents was watching it. They both agreed it was best for Laura to move to another hotel but because Derek was still a fugitive he would have to find a hideout. It wasn’t difficult, there was an abandoned railroad building Derek had been considering moving to ever since the Argents found him at his burned down home.

Laura wouldn’t let him leave just yet once he helped her settled into her two beds hotel room. Derek sighed and ate dinner with her and then laid on the bed to wait for her to fall asleep.

The rest of the night Derek spent reading Stiles’ messages on his phone. He almost smiled when he read how much Stiles enjoyed riding in his car. Of course he said he _“took AMC’s rich boy douchebag car for a joyride”_ and yet he still enjoyed riding in his car.

Derek wrote back, _“Considering what you drive.”_

 _TheOnlyBatman: “Oh! You’ve no idea what I drive. Don’t judge!”_ Derek almost laughed if he wasn’t aware of Laura’s smothering look. Instead he coughed and sat up against the headboard of his bed.

_TheOnlyBatman: “You think you’re so great. What do YOU drive then?”_

_Wolf89: “Something better than a 30-year-old beat-up.”_

_TheOnlyBatman: “Okay seriously, are you messing with me?”_

_Wolf89: “No.”_

_TheOnlyBatman: “How you know?”_

_Wolf89: “You’re 16. And you just called AMC a ‘rich boy douchebag’.”_

_TheOnlyBatman: “So???”_

Derek sighed and rolled his eyes. Sure he was stretching it a little. He’d been in Stiles’ car. He’d _bled_ in Stiles’ Jeep. So he knew exactly what car the kid drove. A 1980 pale blue Jeep CJ5 because it wasn’t like Stiles could afford anything better than that beat-up.

_Wolf89: “Meaning you are not a rich boy, and you don’t think of yourself as a douchebag.”_

_TheOnlyBatman: “Because I’m NOT a douchebag!”_

_Wolf89: “That’s what you say.”_

_TheOnlyBatman: “OH MY GOD.”_

_Wolf89: “Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain.”_

_TheOnlyBatman: “Oh God, don’t tell me you’re some religious 45-year-old fanatic.”_

Derek bit back a smile. He waited because he knew more was coming.

_TheOnlyBatman: “You aren’t a missionary are you? Tell me you’re not a missionary.”_

_TheOnlyBatman: “Oh my god, I’ve been talking to a dude who wants to convert me.”_

_TheOnlyBatman: “Seriously, I mean I celebrate all the big holidays and we used to go to church but I’m really not that religious. And you should probably give up. I’m not going to love God enough to devote myself to the Bible. And I really REALLY want to lose my virginity sometime soon.”_

_Wolf89: “TMI.”_

_Wolf89: “It was a joke.”_

_TheOnlyBatman: “Oh, well you suck at jokes.”_

That was how Derek suddenly remembered why Stiles’ existence online had been so precious and rare. Not that Derek didn’t know how to interact with people or make the usual jokes or flirt. He simply didn’t always want to be charming and intelligent. He was tired of being strong and better than everyone else just because he was a werewolf. He had just wanted to be Derek, just another person out there. Then Stiles had found him online and he’d been fine with Derek the way he was. He didn’t need to constantly joke or flirt, he didn’t have to think about his past, and the anonymity had been a big part of that. Now Derek knew who _TheOnlyBatman_ was and while sometimes that user handle helped Derek forget. It didn’t always.

_Wolf89: “Broke 16-year-old driving a 30-year-old beat-up car… How exactly are you going to lose your virginity?”_

Derek was about to laugh when he saw Stiles’ _“shut up”_ but a pillow smashed him in the face. Derek grabbed his pillow from under his head and swung it at Laura who was standing over him. It didn’t take long before both of them were heaving with pillows in their hands from the other side of the room.

Laura burst into laughter as she collapsed onto her bed. Derek sat down beside her and ran his hand through her long hair. Laura sighed and grabbed his hand. Her eyes stayed closed and in a while her breathing evened out and she was asleep.

Derek quietly moved away, got up and got ready to leave. He knew she was going to follow him back to the railroad when she woke up so instead he decided to backtrack to the house using an underground way. He walked up to the top floor and hesitantly walked into his room. Then he collapsed onto the dusty cover on top of his old twin bed.

 

Once he woke up Derek quickly got up and headed out the same way he came in. He could sense the humans watching their property. It was late morning so Derek snuck his way into Stiles’ neighborhood. He could tell that Stiles was the smarter of the two, so if he had to rely on either of them it was best he went with Stiles. So he snuck into the kid’s bedroom. He kept the door closed and looked around the kid’s room for a time. There wasn’t too much to see so he laid on the twin bed and took a nap.

Derek woke up again when he heard the front door of the house close. He got up and opened the bedroom door again then stood in the back corner behind the door. Stiles smoothly walked into the bedroom, dropped his bag in the middle of the room and logged into the laptop.

“Hey Stiles!” the Sheriff shouted.

“Yo, D-Derek?” Stiles stuttered when he turned around and saw Derek standing behind his door. Derek quickly signaled for Stiles to meet his dad at the door. Stiles moved fast and closed the door half-way into himself. Derek stared upward and inwardly groaned.

When Stiles scrambled into the room Derek closed in on him. “If you say one word—” he started to say.

“Oh, what, you mean like say ‘hey dad, Derek Hale’s in my room… bring your gun’?” Stiles quickly retorted. He feigned confidence and added with a flourish, “Yeah, that’s right. If I’m harboring your fugitive ass, it’s my house my rules buddy.”

Derek let him think he understood. Stiles scoffed as he stepped aside from Derek but Derek just as quickly feigned charging him with a small side step. “Oh, my God!” The boy’s confidence quickly broke. He leapt away and Derek fought down a smirk.

“Scott gonna get the necklace?” Derek asked calmly.

“No. He’s still working on it,” Stiles said as he recomposed himself on his rolling chair. “But there’s something else we can try.” Derek signaled for him to go on as he stepped closer. “The night we were trapped at the school, Scott sent Allison a message asking her to meet him there.”

“So?” Derek shrugged.

“So it wasn’t Scott.”

“Well, can you find out who sent it?” Derek had to stay open minded. There was someone helping his uncle. While Peter was smart he didn’t exactly have to capacity to handle breaking into someone’s account and send a fake text message. Derek did remember breaking Scott’s phone after all, so it wasn’t possible for him to have sent the message when he hadn’t even replaced his phone at the time.

“No, not me. But I think I know somebody who can.” Stiles turned back to his computer. Derek hung back and watched Stiles for a time. The boy stopped whatever he was doing on his computer and then grabbed his phone. He sent a quick text message to someone named Danny.

“Alright so,” Stiles turned from his seat to Derek, “He’s gay.”

“What?”

“Danny, the guy who can trace the text!”

Derek looked upwards again and took in a deep breath. “And?”

Stiles moved his hands around as if they could magically express his words. Then he realized that Stiles was gesturing at him. Derek rolled his eyes. He gritted his teeth and stepped forward one more time. Stiles immediately rolled his chair backwards and knocked into the desk, tumbled out of the chair and groaned out loud in under a second.

Derek sighed and pulled off his jacket. He suddenly remembered he never showered the night before or changed his clothes. Derek tossed his jacket on top of Stiles’ dresser.

“I’m going to borrow a shirt.”

Stiles stood up and spluttered, “No. No!” Derek glared at him. Stiles sighed ran over to him. Derek let him be pulled over to the lounge chair and seated. “Right—Right here!” Stiles grabbed a thick hardcover dictionary and dropped it on Derek’s lap. “Alright, you’re my… uh…” Stiles ran out his bedroom door when he heard the doorbell ring. Stiles rushed back and pointed at Derek, “My cousin!”

He took a deep breath and stared up at the ceiling again. He exhaled and opened the dictionary. Apparently he was supposed to be reading a dictionary with a bloodied shirt on.

Not very long after that a taller boy with dark features was led up to Stiles’ room. Stiles slumped in his chair as the boy stood by the window. Stiles told him he wanted his help to trace a text message.

“You want me to do what?” the taller man asked.

“Trace a text.”

“I came here to do lab work,” the teenager said. “That’s what lab partners do.”

Stiles had the gall to respond with, “And we will, once you trace the text.” Derek did try not to be noticeable by being quiet. Their conversation went on for a while. Derek ignored it all and did his best to read the tenth page of A’s in the dictionary he was holding.

He felt a slight gaze on him, the atmosphere quickly turned its attention where Derek sat. He peeked up with a glower just as Stiles said, “Um, my cousin…” quickly turning away from Derek’s scowl, “Miguel,” he enunciated.

“Is that blood on his shirt?” the lab partner tried to whisper. Derek could hear him clearly enough.

“Yeah. Yes,” Stiles quickly answered. Apparently he hadn’t noticed Derek was wearing the same clothes from yesterday. Did Laura really think that this kid was going to somehow get Derek to save him? At the moment he really wanted to kill him. “Well, he gets these horrible nosebleeds.” Seriously it wasn’t like this was some erotic comic that Stiles read online. Nosebleeds from overstimulation? Seriously? Derek was already on the fifth possible way or killing Stiles—just with his teeth.

Then Stiles had turned to him and said with that stupid smile, “Hey, Miguel. I thought I told you you could borrow one of my shirts.” Derek closed his book heavily, knowing exactly what the little sneak was thinking. He threw the dictionary onto the bed and stood up. Derek pulled his shirt off, knowing Stiles’ lab partner was stealing glances. If he had to strip all the way down because of Stiles’ stupid plan he was going to kill him and there wouldn’t be anyone there to stop him either.

While Stiles rambled on to convince his lab partner to trace the text, Derek opened the dresser to find a shirt he could borrow. Of course Stiles was a size too small.

“Uh, Stiles,” Derek interrupted. With a thick and obviously fake broken English accent he explained, “This… no fit.” He pulled at the shirt in front of him.

Stiles said very seriously, “Then try something else on.” When he saw the reaction from the lab partner and Stiles’ reaction to knowing he’d gotten what he wanted, Derek was already counting the third way to kill Stiles with just his claws. Derek turned back instead and looked for a shirt that wouldn’t be too tight around the shoulders.

“Whoa… Hey, that one looks pretty good huh?” Stiles said behind him. Derek tensed, holding himself back from leaping across the room and throwing Stiles into a wall. “What you think, Danny?” Stiles asked.

Derek turned around but couldn’t quite stop himself from thinking of the thirteenth way to slowly kill Stiles by tearing him open each layer of skin at a time.

“It’s…” Danny paused, and Derek could see the teen’s blush. “It’s not really his color.” Derek turned and pulled off his shirt again. While he couldn’t make Stiles and Scott pay for making him a fugitive, he could get Stiles back for this strip show. For now he had to look throw Stiles’ drawer for a shirt. He wasn’t exactly into patterns or bright colors.

“Stiles!” Derek snapped angrily. “None of these fit!”

Danny turned around and quickly said, “I need the ISP, the phone number and the exact time of text.” Derek grounded his teeth and threw Stiles’ shirt onto the floor. He was sorely tempted to enact one of the methods of killing Stiles but some moral part in him decided against that.


	8. Lie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we are still following the events of the same TV episode

Suddenly there was a dead trail on the necklace even though Scott had gotten a hand on it. Derek could feel it. They were closing in on Peter. The gears of fate was moving, and while Derek might have long lost hope on fate at this moment success felt so close. It was some primal instinct, like some scent left very obviously in the room. Derek he was moments if not seconds away from the final piece to making Peter pay for his crimes. It was frustrating that it was all down to one idiotic barely a C-student teenager.

Somehow they’d found the account user had been under the name Mellissa McCall. While Derek held some reservation that it was definitely Scott’s mother he also didn’t express them. He knew Stiles was worry, the showed an outward confidence in the woman, but Derek could sense it all off him. Stiles was probably hoping someone else had used her account without her knowledge, and in all honesty Derek wouldn’t put it past Peter. It just wasn’t his obligation to try and comfort or in any way care that Stiles was worried about this.

Again, Derek breathed out his frustration and tried to push away his stress. He hated the Jeep. His Camaro was sporty and small, but everything about Stiles’ car felt tight and squeezing. Unfortunately Stiles’ car was less conspicuous than Derek’s Camaro. He could still smell his blood in the car from when he had that wolfsbane bullet in his arm. Nothing about this Jeep made Derek comfortable or relax.

Out of nowhere Laura’s comment rang in his ear. _“He’s definitely going to make you save him.”_ She made it sound as if there would be no decision, that Derek would be forced to do so against his will. Derek had to kill to save someone once before, because taking that innocent life to quickly end her pain had been all he could do to save her from a slow painful death. That was the only time he’d ever “saved” someone. He didn’t wish to do it again. He didn’t wish to watch another person slowly die.

The truth of the matter was that if Peter was truly an Alpha, someone of Stiles’ intelligence was likely warranted an interest for turning. Stiles might survive despite his nervous personality, but there was also the chance the bite would be poison to him. Peter wouldn’t care, but Derek would. While Derek could be indifferent to many things, he knew that without Stiles—without _TheOnlyBatman_ that Derek wouldn’t even be here today. He would still be wallowing in self-guilt and grief after entering another year of college for his Bachelor’s.

Derek huffed angrily and wiped his mind of his wandering thoughts. He had to concentrate on the task at hand. Peter. He had to get Peter.

“Tell him—tell him I’m gonna be there I’m just gonna be a little bit late,” he heard Stiles say on the phone to Scott. Apparently Stiles had decided not to divulge exactly what he was doing to Scott.

Once Stiles hung up Derek immediately told him, “You’re not going to make it.” Beacon Hills Memorial Hospital where Scott’s mom worked was in the central district of Beacon Hills while the school was on the west side close to the woods. It had to be at least a fifteen minute drive without traffic. “And you didn’t tell him about his mom, either.”

“I know,” Stiles groaned.

Derek then straightened in his seat. “By the way, one more thing.” He’d also been waiting for this for the last hour or so.

“Yeah?”

He swiftly smacked Stiles’ face into the steering wheel. He was careful that he didn’t push Stiles’ face right through the car.

“Oh, God!” Stiles groaned loudly. “What the hell was-”

“You know what that was for,” Derek interrupted him angrily. He stared Stiles down again until he nodded. “Go,” he ordered. Stiles leisurely took his time to get out of the care. “GO!” Stiles quickly stumbled out. The kid was lucky he wasn’t going to kill him for forcing him into that little strip show earlier.

He sat and waited as Stiles made his way into the hospital. Derek couldn’t very well walk into the building since he was a wanted fugitive—thanks a lot Scott. Leave it to the barely C-average student to make their only ally in this fight the moving target on all sides. Of all the kids in the woods who Laura could have chosen to save it had to be the dumbest sophomore of Beacon Hills.

While waiting he turned on his cell phone. First he read the ten dramatic and threatening texts from Laura. He ignored them. Then he checked his phone app and stared at the number of messages _TheOnlyBatman_ sent him.

“87 messages?” he scoffed. Where did Stiles even find the time to message him in the last hour? He only had time to look at the last message Stiles sent him.

_TheOnlyBatman: “Are you there?”_

_Wolf89: “Bit busy.”_

Derek closed the app and picked up the call from Stiles. “She’s not here,” was the first thing Stiles said. He couldn’t hear Stiles’ heartbeat over the phone but he could hear the insecure breath the boy exhaled.

“Can you find her?”

“Yeah, I said I can’t find her,” Stiles responded. Somehow Derek could imagine the kid rolling his eyes. The sarcasm was casual, something Stiles didn’t think about. He had a feeling sarcasm and bad jokes and a lot of talking was Stiles’ way of handling a lot of situations.

A thought quickly came to mind. “Look, ask for Jennifer. She’s been looking after my uncle.” She’d helped him before with proving to Scott about what the Argents did. The woman should still be helpful, especially if it was just locating Mellissa McCall. Of course she hadn’t been looking after his uncle for some time since Peter was in the wind.

“I can’t find her either,” Stiles said.

“Keep looking,” he urged. Somewhere deep inside that he didn’t want to acknowledge wanted Derek to get out of the car and go into the hospital. He knew better than to just walk into a hospital and reveal himself.

“Yeah, well, he’s not here either,” came over the line seconds later.

“What?” Why would Stiles think Peter would be there?

“He’s not here. He’s gone, Derek.”

Alarms started ringing in his head. Peter shouldn’t be there at all. Of course not everyone knew that Peter was missing, however unless there was some sort of sign that he had been there Stiles wouldn’t have said it.

“Stiles, get out of there right now—It’s him!” Derek shouted into his phone without thinking about his secrets. “He’s the Alpha! Get out!” Damn it! He just sent a 16-year-old skinny boy into a hospital where Peter had been hiding out. Not just any 16-year-old but _his_ friend. Even if it was only online and Stiles didn’t know it they were friends.

Not again. He couldn’t lose someone he cared about again. Not because of him. Derek jumped out of the Jeep and ran into the hospital. It seemed nearly deserted and a little too quiet. He took a deep sniff to find Stiles’ scent and ran through the halls. He rounded the corner in time to see Jennifer standing in front of a hallway. It was the hallway that led to Peter’s old room, room 115.

Stiles was whimpering, “Oh my God, I’m gonna die.”

Without thinking he ran over and elbowed the nurse in the face. She went down easily. Derek took half a breath of relief and stared down Peter. He was dressed head to toe in almost all black and in a trench coat. Half of his face was mostly healed from the burns left there six years ago.

“That’s not nice,” Peter sighed at him. “She’s my nurse.” He was standing on the other end of the hall, seemingly not crazy or dangerous.

Derek quickly spat back, “She’s a psychotic bitch helping you kill people.” Without breaking eye contact on his uncle he quickly ordered Stiles, “Get out of the way.” Now that he could see that Stiles was unharmed he was much more relieved and focused.

“Oh, damn,” Stiles groaned, the gravity of the situation finally hitting him. He sunk down onto the tiled floor and pulled himself as low and as far against the wall of the small hallway as possible.

“You think I killed Laura on purpose? One of my own family?” Peter asked as he started walking toward Derek. Of course Derek did, because it wasn’t Laura he killed. It was another poor (maybe pack-less) alpha who died in the woods who strikingly resembled Laura. Peter had “killed” Laura on purpose because he knew what the power of an Alpha could do for him, even without a pack.

The growl erupted from him and Derek let part of the werewolf peek out. His canines elongated and he felt the adrenaline rush through him. Derek leapt onto the hallway wall opposite Stile and ricocheted off it with extra momentum to attack Peter. Peter opened his palm, hands on Derek’s chest and pushed Derek into the wall closest to him. Then he gripped Derek’s jacket and threw him against the opposite wall. He felt the impact a lot more than it appeared.

Peter had definitely gotten stronger after taking the power of an Alpha from that Jane Doe. Derek laid there and listened to Stiles scampering away. He could care less what stupid excuses Peter was giving him as he dragged Derek to the body of his unconscious nurse. As Peter dropped him back on the floor he reached down and broke Jennifer’s neck. Then he reached into her pocket and pulled out her keys.

Derek rolled over and got up. “You want forgiveness?” he asked as he punched Peter. He could still sense Stiles hiding somewhere close. Derek was a beta so he didn’t have the power to defeat Peter. He could sense Peter’s abilities growing by the second. He and Laura together might have taken Peter, but he couldn’t allow his sister to carry the burden of taking Peter’s life.

He was kicked and rolled over onto the other end of another hallway. Peter was still jabbering own. As he did when he was a kid Derek drowned most of it out. Derek spat out blood onto the floor.

“Yes, becoming an Alpha, taking that from Laura, pushed me over a plateau in the healing process. I can’t help that.” What an excuse.

 Derek pushed himself up and swung at Peter again. A part of him still held some hope Peter had better reasons than insanity. He could sense that Stiles had run off so he gave up. Peter threw him into the glass window of the medical staff desk.

Derek dragged himself into the back while hating himself. He didn’t have the heart to kill Peter. Not yet. He’d thought he was prepared for it. He had to protect Laura. He knew if Peter found out that she was still alive he would try to take the status from her again. He knew Peter was ruthless and hungered for power. A part of him was still too sentimental about his uncle.

Derek pulled himself into a back room and leaned against the cabinets. Stiles was long gone, Peter thought Laura was dead, and he was beaten up and bloody. Now Derek had nothing left to lose because for the moment they were all out of the way. Most importantly Peter could never know that Derek held some kind of sentiment for Stiles. He had to find a way to ditch his phone. It was the only evidence he had of Stiles and Laura. Now that Stiles was safe Derek could think clearer. He took in deep breaths, laboring even though he felt his body healing. The wounds from an Alpha took longer to heal but the damage wasn’t as bad as being stabbed in the back.

“I was going to wait for dramatic flair… but…” Peter said after a heavy sigh. Derek continued to glare at Peter. He’d always been dramatic, even when he wasn’t trying to be. When his scars receded from his face it was a sign that Peter completely healed. “Derek, you have to give me a chance to explain.” His snake of an uncle crouched down. His voice and tone never so much as waver. Derek steeled his heart and began to calm down. He had to be able to lie to Peter. He had to convince Peter he was willing to “understand” why he’d done what he did. “After all we’re family.” Derek knew he would say it. It was Peter after all. Derek might have unintentionally betrayed his entire family but Peter had always thought of betraying their family.

After what happened with Kate, Derek reevaluated his entire life. That was when he knew Peter would have done anything for power. So while he was grateful Peter had survived the fire he had also appreciated the fact that Peter had been disabled in a vegetative state. It was also why he had previously thought he had no qualms killing him. He had no such reservations the night Peter had attacked Laura, but he had them now that Laura wasn’t in immediate danger.

Derek nodded to agree, letting his heart rate calm. He then listened to Peter’s explanations. Peter went on about how he had to get revenge on everyone who had harmed them. How it was unbecoming of humans they had always protected in their territory to try and kill them all. Peter had even try to explain that it was necessary to kill and take Laura’s power because she would never had looked for revenge. After all what had she really done in the last six years? Only, the reason she hadn’t done anything was because of Derek.

Peter went on as Derek silently observed his uncle. The man explained that really it was the humans who were responsible for Laura’s death. If only she’d taken her role as an alpha seriously. If only she hadn’t been brainwashed. It had been necessary to get the powers from her, to heal, to get revenge on the humans, etc. He’d justified his cruel murder of a woman for revenge on their family. He basically just told Derek that he killed one of his only surviving family members to revenge all the ones who had died. That made no sense at all. While the explanation made Derek seethe he didn’t show it one bit, keeping all his emotions and the indicators in check as much as possible. He even dug his claws into his ribs where he had his arm wrapped around so he wouldn’t speak out of turn. The pain kept him from expressing anger. He slowly did this until Peter asked him to join in his goal and Derek managed to trick Peter with his agreement.

“I’ll get revenge for my sister,” Derek agreed. That wasn’t a lie. Now Derek knew for certain Peter had to die. He felt no remorse “killing” Laura at all. Peter was definitely a danger to everyone. The past weeks and all the murders proved that. Peter was a monster. Derek still followed the rules of his family. Werewolves might be predators but they weren’t killers. Peter was a killer, he made that choice.

It seemed Peter was satisfied with the conviction in Derek’s voice. Peter expressed how glad he was that Derek saw it his way. The pain had started to recede by the time Peter had finished his explanation for why he hadn’t thought Derek would have agreed at first. The man went on about how he hadn’t given Derek enough credit as his nephew.

Then Peter talked about getting Scott in for the plan. After all there was only one last step—one last person. One alpha and two betas would give Peter enough power, but Peter didn’t know that Derek still had his own alpha. Right now it wasn’t power Peter was gaining, just the illusion of it.

It was clear Peter wanted to kill the Argent behind it. Derek did his best to sound reasonable, explaining to Peter exactly why or why not Scott would or wouldn’t agree. He mentioned Allison being a huge bargaining chip to keep Peter talking. There was no possible way Scott would agree if Allison would be a victim in Peter’s plan after all. While the man might have readily agreed only the guilty party would die, it was obvious to Derek that Peter would kill all the Argents in his path. Or as he carefully worded it, unavoidable collateral damage.

As they spoke he felt himself heal. Something also became abundantly clear. Derek couldn’t allow Peter to put innocent blood on the hands of another. Not the same way he’d tricked Derek into spilling innocent blood, or for some insane wish for revenge. Derek had to find it in him to kill Peter. The resolve slowly built itself up again. Derek would take the alpha power from Peter and finish this. Word would spread soon after these events of a new alpha rising in Beacon Hills. It couldn’t be Peter when the time came, because he knew Peter had enough cruelty to meet the demands put on him.

Closing his eyes are he finally completely healed he remembered Laura’s words. _“He’s definitely going to make you save him.”_

He had just save Stiles Stilinski didn’t he? Derek gritted his teeth, ignoring Peter for a moment to collect himself. He was angry and frustrated with himself. Stiles was his friend. He didn’t have friends—not ones that counted enough to be saving or pulling into this life. Most critically, Derek had a feeling he’d just enacted what Laura would call the modern version of Juliet lamenting over her love for Romeo. Derek was definitely regretting his sentimentality towards his friendship with Stiles.


	9. Groundwork

Derek let out a roar when Kate turned on the light and Allison gasped. He’d scented her fear and anxiety long before she’d even walked onto the property. Her heartrate had climbed exponentially but now it’d gone up three notches from there. For a strong moment Derek knew he should have expected this. Allison was an Argent after all. Even if fear was rolling off her scent, her heart rate had climbed, and her eyes were blown wide—somehow, he had just known. They were hunters.

While Kate went on her tangent Derek glared at them but kept quiet. He let her do as she pleased and thought back on the night. He couldn’t quite see what Scott saw in the girl besides that innocent beauty which belied the cold interior of her soul. He wasn’t misdirecting his feelings of Kate onto Allison. Derek was certain he could see through Allison because he could now see through Kate.

Kate Argent had been sneaky and conniving, not like a fox but like a woman. She had hatred bred into her very soul but most of all viciousness and blood-soaked hands. She was like the fire that had burned his entire life down. If she was allowed she would burn the entire world down and stand atop the ashes with perfect belief in her reasoning. Allison on the other hand, from what he knew, was at a point in her life where she had to decide which path to walk. She was an Argent and he instinctively knew exactly which path she would take. He’d been here when she’d cried about wanting to be “powerful”. For a child of a hunter, there was only one way to ever feel safe when gripped with the fear of his kind.

Allison Argent was naïve and gullible, everything Derek had described Scott to be. While Scott was slightly apprehensive over everything because he’d been bitten, Allison was simply staring at the monstrous beast chained to a metal fence beneath a decrepit house. Her entire life had been a lie. To him she was an illusion hiding a detached and impersonal hunter. Her very soul was cold and unmoving. Exactly the way a hunter was meant to be. _She_ was meant to be a hunter, and Derek just gave her the very reason she needed to walk down the path Kate laid before her.

At some point Derek simply glared at the two. Kate talked on and on about him and his kind being monsters and abominations of nature. Derek played the part. He roared like a mindless caged animal, seethed when necessary, and growled and flashed his fangs for points. It was what Kate wanted and he knew he was playing into her hand—but she was also playing into his. No one fell harder and further than people who gloated before winning.

Once they had gone, self-loathing crushed him. He reflected on his entire experience of the night and waited to let his plan unfold. Even though it was part of the strategy, even though it was logical this deception didn’t fit well with him… Getting caught hadn’t been part of his original plan but he could work with it. He wasn’t so sure about the escaping part of his plan. Derek hadn’t planned far enough.

He hadn’t entirely expected to be held underneath his old home or that it’ll be the setting. He had expected nearly everything else. So, he closed his eyes, rested as best he could, and gritted his teeth in wait of Kate’s torture.

 

Before he’d been caught, Derek had shown up after the game with Peter when Scott was alone in the locker room. Peter went on with his monologue about his plan. It had taken Scott some time to figure out that Derek was with Peter. He’d even brought up the fact that Peter had killed his sister.

Since no one but him knew that Laura had actually survived that night Derek couldn’t say anything. It was logical that Scott questioned how Derek could align himself with Peter. He had hoped Scott would just shut up and listen to Peter instead of bombard him. Of course, it had to be the stupid barely C-minus Sophomore of Beacon Hills High that his sister had saved. Derek had to work around his responses to Scott so he could continue to mislead Peter.

“It was a mistake,” he had grounded out. Scott had looked at him as if he was crazy. Derek tried not to react. “It happens,” he had said in even more measure as he held Scott’s gaze. Then Peter took the 16-year-old’s attention off Derek and he inwardly sighed.

He watched the two bantering back and forth. It had been surprising to see a newly turned beta actually stand up to an Alpha. He’d expected submission, some sort of draw towards Peter as an Alpha, but then again perhaps Scott had an inner potential Derek hadn’t been able to glean before. Or, it was simply that Scott’s connection to Laura as the Alpha who bit him was stronger than Derek suspected. Perhaps their connection made it possible for Scott to stay impartial to Peter as an Alpha.

Derek stood where he was when Peter mentioned showing Scott what happened. He couldn’t move and forced himself not to react as Peter’s claws pierced the base of Scott’s neck. Scott seized up and hit the floor as Peter left. Derek had never had memories inserted or taken from him. Alphas were the only ones known to have the ability to do this. He’d never expected Peter, so new to this, would attempt something so hazardous. Even he had thought twice about asking Laura to take away his memories, deciding against even telling her about any of the memories he wanted gone.

If Peter had done anything wrong Scott could have gone into coma, he could have gone into a vegetative state, he could had lost all his memories and sense of self erased, or even died from the overload of information given to him. Peter hadn’t expected him to follow after that so Derek had stood and waited for Scott to finish seizing. It took nearly a half hour for Scott to even visibly breathe and his muscles to relax against the wet floor of the boy’s shower.

His eyes opened and he gasped. Scott’s eyes then flashed that brilliant yellow of purity before he could focus on anything. His claws and his canines had extended. Derek waited before approaching Scott.

“What did you see?” Derek knelt down on a knee and leaned down to put a hand on Scott’s forearm. He didn’t take away the boy’s pain, instead just allowed his closeness to comfort Scott. The boy took another minute before he could recollect himself.

“What was that?”

“Tell me what he showed you,” Derek had pressed him. He didn’t have time for a werewolf lesson. Scott explained then, what he saw in the past, the pain he felt from Peter healing his wounds, and how Peter had found the ones who had a part in the fire. The teenager shuttered as he continued to explain how his memories began to mix with the ones Peter had given him. It was clear the story had slowly pieced itself together inside Scott’s head—perhaps exactly as it had for Peter.

Scott was still shaking when his hand on Derek’s forearm tightened. At that time Derek tried to give him a sense of comfort by releasing his own reassuring influence out toward Scott.

“I know what he felt when he killed them…” Scott gasped and looked into Derek’s eyes. There had been a shaken look in those eyes, but mostly of concern for the people he cared about and their futures. Then the revealed how powerful Peter had felt that first full moon night, how he had felt even more powerful each time he killed someone, and exactly just how crazy he was in his head.

Scott looked at Derek after his frenzied explanation. “Why did he kill your sister?” That specific memory had either been unclear or not there. It seemed not even Scott had completely memory of his time being bitten, and crazed as Peter was the man’s memories were still an illusion of his own making.

Derek had pursed his lips and looked away. Gods only know he had lied enough times already, and it was easy to keep the truth from Scott. Only he could see now that Scott was coming into his own. Someday Scott would find out the truth and he just might turn to taking Laura’s life. If Derek’s plan worked, he assumed he would be able to make Scott accept his new life as a werewolf. That hadn’t seemed so foolish of a thought at the time.

“Power,” Derek had finally replied. “The power of an Alpha.” It was the truth. Peter had even told him so, that he killed Laura without a second’s thought and without remorse for power. Derek put his hand on Scott’s shoulder. “There are some things I can’t tell you. Stay out of my way Scott.” Scott stared at him with a glare of suspicion and judgment.

“Do _you_ want power?” Scott asked him, the innocent question obviously accusing him of the same crime as his uncle.

It wasn’t so much a want as much as a necessity. Derek decided not to answer. He stood up from where he sat and glared down at the teenager. He had taken everything Scott told him and had made sure his plan would work with it. With the memory that Peter had given Scott he’d also given Derek an idea of what he’d been planning. He would have to tell Laura everything after the fact, because he knew she would disapprove should he tell her beforehand. She was his Alpha after all and he would have to obey if she ordered him.

* * *

 

Derek exhaled, his memories quickly jumping to just before he’d been caught. He’d somehow convinced Jackson to play his partner in crime. He had explained that he would be able to give Jackson what he needed if he agreed to help him kill Peter. He had promised Jackson the bite of an Alpha, but had told him he had no guarantees on the boy’s survival. The much-too-symmetric anger fueled prideful teenager had readily agreed to his terms. He warned him, however, that the bite was what proved whether or not he deserved the same abilities and powers Scott McCall had received. He didn’t mention how exactly it was that Scott came to receive his bite.

They were in the house when he managed to truly beat the gravity of the situation into Jackson’s mind. Yes, it was true that Derek didn’t think he deserved the bite. However, his constant state of fear and anger made for him to be the best person for Peter to ignore in his state of seeking power. Not only that, but he wasn’t going to offer the bite without first including _all_ the terms which that entails. Just as his mother had always done, he explained that being bitten into their community meant that Jackson would be hunted down by others—not just the Argents. It would mean constantly being in life and death situations. It also mean learning to control his impulses. He was sure the boy hadn’t listened to any of his warnings until they walked into the manor.

Then Scott showed up. “Excuse me,” he’s called out from the top of the staircase. “ _Co-_ captain.” He leapt down at Derek at that moment. Their exchange didn’t take very long. As Derek expected, the hunters had followed him to the manor. They’d seen Jackson walk in with him but not Scott. The first part of his plan had been to mislead the hunters from suspecting Scott to be the second beta. He’d heard the whispers from the hunters, considering they’d been chasing him all around town.

“Cover your eyes! Scott!” he’d shouted the warning. He quickly threw the boy out of the way. “Go! Run!” he ordered. He stepped out of the manor onto the front porch and let out the roar of a werewolf. Wolves didn’t roar after all. He diverted the hunter’s attentions, knowing they would be more preoccupied trying to catch him, than care about Jackson running away or to notice Scott either.

Waking up in the dark underneath the manor where his family had been burned alive hadn’t been what he expected. He had expected a warehouse or even in the abandoned area of the ironworks. He hadn’t expected to be here. Derek’s hatred for Kate grew even more. He knew if Laura had known about his plan she would have dragged him out of Beacon Hills if it was the last thing she did.

If everything worked out as he hoped, Derek would kill Peter and be able to stay in Beacon Hills to protect this place. As his family always had for generations. If, and that was a heavy if, the teenagers who had been roped into his family’s mess were as even a fraction as reliable as he hoped. He was starting to doubt it, considering the well of unstable emotions that poured out of the cold soul that was Allison Argent. But, she was a hunter, and if he knew anything about hunters it was that they were reliable when it came to rounding up their targets. One of those targets was Peter and the other one was Scott, and with Scott surely Jackson would follow.

Derek was riding on killing Peter with an in-the-closet teenage anger management case, the dumbest sophomore of Beacon Hills, and the future hunting heir of the Argents. None of them were a vote of confidence but Derek was gambling the very well-being of Beacon Hills on these emotionally unstable teens.

In the dark, Derek stared at the new phone left on the table that Kate had taken from him. They assumed it was Derek’s phone. They hadn’t been able to break the passcode on it. Not that they had really cared to try very hard.

A resigned sigh escaped him. His plan was also riding on awkward Stiles figuring out exactly what Derek did and that he could get his lab partner to help him find his missing “cousin”. Hopefully before Peter did, because a war would breakout if Peter found him and Kate first. All the groundwork was set up, now it was just about the fall of two of Derek’s worst enemies.


End file.
